An SLA-Informed and Cognitive Linguistic Approach to the Teaching of L2 Catalan Tense-Aspect

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between second language acquisition and language teaching presenting the design of a teaching sequence on past tenses that integrates the results of research on tense and aspect in a second language (the Aspect and Discourse Hypotheses and Input processing instruction). By implementing the principles of cognitive linguistics, the article presents the design of activities to teach the meanings of perfective, imperfective, and perfect morphology with the introduction of the notions of space of action, verbal action, and the speaker's point of view. All concepts are illustrated with activities implemented in a Catalan classroom at the University of Cardiff (A1 and A2 levels).

Keywords

• tense
• aspect
• perfectivity
• cognitive grammar