Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary

Lang. Teach. (2013), 46.
2, 208–224
c Cambridge University Press 2011
doi:10.1017/S0261444811000450 First published online 11 November 2011
Cognitive Linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary:

Assessment and integration
Frank Boers Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Frank.Boers@vuw.ac.nz
The pace at which new L2 words or expressions are acquired is influenced by the degree of
engagement with them on the part of the learner. Several researchers with a
Cognitive-Linguistics (CL) background have, since the 1990s, proposed ways of exploiting
non-arbitrary aspects of vocabulary as stimuli for such engagement. Their proposals have
been backed up by the results of several quasi-experimental studies. It must be
acknowledged, however, that many of these are small-scale, some show only small effect
sizes, and some are hard to interpret due to confounding variables. Taken collectively, the
reported experiments are nevertheless beginning to constitute a body of evidence in favour of
CL-informed instruction that is hard to dismiss, so there is reason to believe that this kind of
instruction deserves a niche in second language programmes. However, a judicious
implementation of CL ideas stands to gain considerably from a closer alignment with
‘mainstream’ second language vocabulary research. Insights to be taken on board from the
mainstream concern issues of selection, the desirability of distributed learning, and the need
to cater for complementary types of knowledge.
1. Background
Few will take issue with the assertion that it is important for second language (L2) learners to
build a sizeable vocabulary, and vocabulary is no longer by any means the neglected area in
L2 research that it used to be (Meara 1980). Vocabulary size has been found to be a major
contributor to proficiency. Iwashita et al. (2008) found vocabulary use to be the strongest
predictor of oral proficiency ratings, and correlation coefficients of .70 and higher have
been reported between learners’ vocabulary size and their scores on reading and listening
comprehension tests (Qian 1999; Staehr 2009). It is estimated that good comprehension of
a variety of (non-technical) texts requires knowledge of over 7,000 word families (Nation
2006; Staehr 2009; Webb & Rodgers 2009; Schmitt, Jiang & Grabe 2011). That’s a lot of
word forms to be learned, because a word family consists of a lemma and its derivations. For
example, argue, argues, argued, arguing, argument, arguments, arguable, argumentation and argumentative
Revised version of a plenary address given at the 2011 American Association of Applied Linguistics conference, Chicago,
28 March 2011.
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FRANK BOERS: COGNITIVE LINGUISTIC APPROACHES TO VOCABULARY 209
ARGUABLY make up one word family. It is sometimes assumed that if a learner knows one
member of the family, its relatives will be understood as well. This, however, cannot be taken
for granted (Schmitt & Zimmerman 2002).
The vocabulary learning challenge is also augmented by the fact that many words are
polysemous. There’s a strong argument for task-based learning and They haven’t made up yet after
their argument show different uses of the word argument. She embraced her husband and She embraced
Dynamic Systems Theory illustrate different uses of the word embraced. Learning a ‘word’ typically
involves learning more than one form–meaning mapping. Although learners may be familiar
with the word mushroom in She doesn’t like mushrooms in her omelette, there is no guarantee at
all that this will enable them to accurately interpret its extended use in Second-hand shops
have mushroomed across town (MacArthur & Littlemore 2008). Polysemy is found everywhere,
but high-frequency words such as prepositions and multipurpose verbs (e.g. have) make up
a segment of vocabulary where it is especially rampant. The upshot of this is that the
aforementioned vocabulary size goals – daunting as they are – disguise the true amount of
work awaiting learners, not only because word families comprise several word forms, but also
because a single word form is likely to have several meanings.
Given the vast number of word forms and meanings to be acquired – obviously far too many
to be tackled in the classroom – we have to be hopeful that learners will pick up a lot of vocab-
ulary incidentally, for example during extensive reading (e.g. Krashen 1989). Incidental learn-
ing has been found to be a very slow process, however (e.g. Laufer & Roitblat-Rozovski 2011).
It gets worse. Vocabulary knowledge extends beyond single words. Since the advent of
corpus linguistics, it has become increasingly evident that most words prefer the company of
some other words over that of near synonyms. This Idiom Principle – as opposed to the Open-
choice Principle (Sinclair 1991) – shows up in a panoply of word partnerships and multiword
units, such as collocations (make an effort, a warm welcome, utterly disgusting), compounds (peer
pressure, love handles), multiword verbs (turn up, follow through with), social interaction routines
(nice to meet you, how are you doing), clichés (live and learn, publish or perish), idioms (jump the gun,
close ranks), and discourse organisers (on the other hand, having said that). The term ‘formulaic
sequence’ is now often used as an umbrella term for such word strings that are believed to
be acquired, stored and retrieved for usage by native speakers in a ‘holistic’ fashion (Wray
2002). They contribute to fluent language use and their (appropriate) use is a distinguishing
feature of native speaker discourse (see Schmitt 2004, Meunier & Granger 2008, Barfield &
Gyllstad 2009 and Wood 2010, for collective volumes on formulaic sequences in L2 learning).
Students’ (accurate) use of formulaic sequences correlates significantly with their proficiency,
which suggests that learners stand to gain from adding such multiword items to their L2
repertoires (Boers et al. 2006b). But this addition to the vocabulary learning challenge can
hardly be taken lightly, given estimates that half of native speaker discourse reflects the
workings of the Idiom Principle (Erman & Warren 2001) and observations that the incidental
acquisition of L2 multiword units is a very slow process as well, especially in non-immersion
contexts (Stengers et al. 2010; Laufer & Waldman 2011).
To make up for the generally slow pace of incidental vocabulary uptake, Laufer (2005)
makes a plea for targeting more vocabulary explicitly in language-focused activities and
exercises. Language-focused learning is one of four strands that Nation (2007) argues should
be present in roughly equal amounts in a general proficiency programme. The other three
210 PLENARY SPEECHES
strands are message-focused input, message-focused output and fluency development. (Nation
actually uses meaning-focused input/output. I prefer message-focused, because Cognitive
Linguistics (CL) treats all linguistic units, by definition, as meaningful.)
Message-focused input means ample exposure to comprehensible input (cf. Krashen’s
1985 Input Hypothesis). It is input made up predominantly of familiar language, which
aids the learner in making inferences about the meaning of as yet unknown items and it
engenders (implicit) knowledge of the common usage patterns of items they are already
acquainted with. The strand of message-focused output is where learners experience gaps
in their knowledge which they may subsequently try to fill (cf. Swain’s 1993 Pushed Output
Hypothesis). The fourth strand is fluency development. Fluency development activities foster
smooth recognition, retrieval and usage of linguistic elements.
The language-focused learning strand is where learners’ attention turns from what is said
to how it is said. This attention to the code rather than the content of a message may
be at the learner’s own instigation but it will often be instigated by a teacher (or another
interlocutor) or by a materials writer. It is the strand that comprises procedures where a
certain feature or segment of language is the object of a lesson as well as interventions
where the student’s attention is temporarily directed to the code as a brief intermezzo during
message-focused activities. These have become known as forms-focused and form-focused
procedures, respectively (Long 1991). As we shall see, the procedures used in the majority
of the Cognitive-Linguistics informed intervention studies have so far been of the former
type.
According to Nation, the language-focused learning strand should take up just about
a quarter of a learner’s opportunities for learning. When it is decided to invest time in
vocabulary instruction, one should have good reason to believe that it is a kind of instruction
that gives an optimal return on this investment: that it will accelerate the acquisition process
in comparison with other types of instruction within the language-focused learning strand
or in comparison with opportunities for incidental acquisition through the message-focused
strands. It is in this context that we ask whether there is a niche in language-focused learning
for ideas borrowed from the school of thought known as CL.
2. Why turn to Cognitive Linguistics?
One yardstick for estimating the likely effectiveness of a vocabulary-learning procedure is

the degree of engagement with the lexical item(s) that it stimulates (Laufer & Hulstijn 2001;
Schmitt 2008). It has been suggested that ideas from CL can provide such stimulation. A
description of CL that does justice to this increasingly influential school is beyond the scope of
this article. The interested reader will find Evans & Green (2006) an accessible introduction
to CL, and Geeraerts & Cuyckens (2007) is a recent collection that displays the wide array of
projects under the CL umbrella. In the area of language learning, Robinson & Ellis’ (2008)
edited volume brings together CL proponents and psycholinguists specialised in research
on usage-based second language acquisition. An illustration that more alliances are in the
making is Lantolf (2011), who proposes an integration of CL and Sociocultural Theory.
Due to constraints of space, what follows can only be a crude account of CL, focusing
exclusively on CL ideas that have been tried in vocabulary teaching. The CL movement
began mostly as a reaction to generative linguistics, which was felt to treat language too much
as a special-purpose component, divorced from general cognition and the way language
is actually used. CL treats language and its acquisition as usage-based and as reflecting the
general cognitive abilities that operate in our interaction with the world (e.g. Langacker 1987).
In this line of thought, linguistic phenomena are considered to be ‘motivated’. Some things
are more likely to happen in language than others because they are more congruent with
habitual human perceptual and cognitive experience. If language were not motivated that
way, we might not find The table was being run around slightly odd. At least one of the reasons
why we find this statement odd is its incongruence with the figure–ground organisation we
habitually apply to our perception of scenes. We tend to select as figure of a scene the thing
that draws our attention most, and that is typically something that moves or that is animate.
If language were not motivated, we would not be momentarily puzzled by A glass of alcohol
containing wine, please. That is because the specified information in this utterance is at odds with
the way we organise categories around prototypical members, whose characteristics are clear-
cut and therefore require no further clarification. It is the peripheral members of the category
that invite modifiers, not the central members. If motivation did not play a part in language
development, there would be no reason why Shall I give you a foot with that? has not become
an institutionalised offer to help someone. Shall I give you a hand? has stood a better chance at
becoming institutionalised because of our shared knowledge that we tend to use our hands
rather than our feet to MANIpulate things. Such shared associations enable us to use many
words as readily understood metonyms and to understand many underspecified messages
effortlessly. If motivation did not play a part in language, we would probably not be puzzled
by All this good news is getting me down. We have come to associate happiness with being up,
not down. This is probably grounded in the recurring observation that fit and happy people
tend to be up and about, and that smiling makes the corners of your mouth turn upwards.
Lakoff & Johnson’s seminal work Metaphors we live by (1980) showed convincingly that a great
proportion of everyday language is figurative, that is, language use is full of conventionalised
metaphoric and metonymic expressions. The main tenet of what was subsequently to become
known as Conceptual Metaphor Theory (e.g. Lakoff 1987) is that it is metaphoric thought (i.e.
the creation of analogies between distinct domains of experience) that enables us to reason
and communicate about intangible domains of experience in the first place.
It cannot be overemphasised that ‘motivated’ in CL jargon is not synonymous with
‘predictable’. The fact that one can give plausible retrospective accounts of why a given
way of packaging a certain message has become standardised in a language does not mean
that one can with any confidence predict what will get standardised. If there were no room for
arbitrariness, then all natural languages would look and sound identical. If the CL endeavour
to describe linguistic phenomena as motivated holds a certain promise for language pedagogy,
it is precisely because in many cases the motivation is not blatantly obvious to the learner.
Highly polysemous words, such as prepositions, are classic CL showcases for the workings
of motivation, where it is demonstrated that seemingly distinct uses of the same word are
related to a prototypical usage and together form a radial network of uses extending outwards
from that central prototype (e.g. Brugman 1981). Some of the meaning extensions concern
literal uses. For instance, if a preposition is often used to describe a situation of contiguity (the
bottle on the table; the cloth over the table; the bulge under the blanket), then it is likely to develop a rotated
sense (the picture on the wall; the veil over her face; the skin under his shirt) (Boers 1996). Many other
extended uses of prepositions are motivated by metaphor. For instance, the figurative use of
beyond in Why she ever got married to him is beyond me and She’d changed beyond recognition probably
derives from the notion of inaccessibility associated with the literal use of this preposition, as
in The ball fell beyond the hedge (and so it was beyond our reach). Another type of multipurpose word
that has attracted a fair amount of interest from cognitive linguists is modal verbs (Sweetser
1990). The epistemic uses of such verbs (The light is on, so she must be home now) are believed
to be extended from the deontic uses (You must come home before midnight) via inferences (if you
oblige someone to do something, for instance, then it is highly likely that it will get done).
A particularly fruitful branch of CL has been Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) (e.g.
Kövecses 2010), which demonstrates how we project our knowledge of concrete, familiar
domains of life onto abstract domains in an attempt to come to grips with the latter. Along
with the structure that the ‘source domain’ lends to the ‘target domain’ come words and
phrases associated with the source domain, but which subsequently adopt an additional,
figurative sense. For example, one of the source domains we sometimes resort to in our
thinking and communicating about learning is that of eating/drinking (a version of a more
generic learning-as-intake metaphor). This is reflected in utterances like Anna has a great thirst
for knowledge; These students are expected to swallow a lot of nonsense; Good teachers try to spice up their
classes; I cannot digest so much information and Don’t just regurgitate what the teacher said.
Let’s now turn to the ways in which the above kinds of portrayal of polysemy and figurative
multiword items have been adapted by pedagogy-oriented CL advocates for purposes of
vocabulary instruction.
3. Examples of CL-inspired proposals for vocabulary instruction
A considerable number of pleas have been made for introducing the aforementioned CL
ideas (especially CMT) to L2 vocabulary teaching (e.g. Danesi 1992; MacLennan 1994; Scott
1994) and some authors have gone on to develop resources intended to be in accordance
with CL tenets for language learners (Rudzka-Ostyn 2003) and for teachers (Lindstromberg
& Boers 2008a).
One common thread in CL-style instruction is the attempt to make non-basic uses of
polysemes more memorable by (re-)establishing associations with the basic uses that they
are derived from. This may simply involve informing or reminding learners of the literal
counterpart of a conventionalised figurative use of a word, when that word is met in a text:
the literal sense of rake when students encounter The banks were raking in a lot of profits, the literal
sense of dodge in The PM dodged all the questions about the war, and so on. The literal counterparts
can be clarified verbally, but their meaning can often be made more memorable through
enactment (Lindstromberg & Boers 2005) or the use of pictures and drawings (Boers et al.
2008). Cognitive engagement can further be stimulated by asking learners themselves to
make an educated guess at the meaning of a metaphorically used word, such as fledgling in A
fledgling democracy, aided by information about its literal counterpart (fledgling in the sense of a
young bird). These are very brief interventions – and by no means unique to CL-informed
teaching. CL-style treatment of highly polysemous words, however, has typically involved
more extensive teaching, which starts with the identification of a prototypical meaning,
followed by a step-by-step explication of meaning extensions from that prototype until a
semantic network comprising most of the uses of the word is established (e.g. Tyler & Evans
2004, for an account of the preposition over, and Lindstromberg 2010, for a pedagogical
treatment of English prepositions at large).
A second common thread in CL-style pedagogy is the attempt to make idioms and phrasal
verbs easier to learn by showing how these instantiate common conceptual metaphors.
Expressions such as Simmer down, He blew up at me, He’s hot under the collar, She was fuming, He’s
blowing off steam and Don’t add fuel to the fire can all be categorised as instantiating the metaphors
THE BODY IS A CONTAINER FOR THE EMOTIONS and ANGER IS HEAT. (It is customary in
Conceptual Metaphor Theory to use small capitals to refer to conceptual metaphors.) Idioms
can also be categorised according to their source domain, that is, the experiential domain in
which they are/were used in their literal sense. For example, Clear the decks, On an even keel, Give
someone a wide berth, Walk the plank, Take on board, Out of your depth and A leading light can all be traced
back to seafaring. Additional stimuli for cognitive engagement can be given. Learners can
be asked to propose reasons why a certain conceptual metaphor ‘makes sense’. For instance,
it seems natural to talk about emotions such as anger in terms of heat, because of the
physiological changes that coincide with passionate emotions. Learners can also be asked to
make comparisons with their L1 to see if the metaphors are shared (Deignan, Gabrys & Solska
1997). They can be asked to propose reasons why a certain source domain is drawn upon
strikingly often in the target language. For example, the abundance of seafaring expressions
in English can easily be motivated with reference to Britain’s history as a seafaring nation.
Learners can be asked to group figurative expressions under the headings of conceptual
metaphors or to identify their common source domains themselves. For instance, Set the stage
for something, Be waiting in the wings, Take centre stage, In the limelight, Play to the gallery, Behind
the scenes and The curtain comes down should suffice for learners to recognise the theatre as a
source domain. Again, the meaning of the idiom can be made more memorable via pictorial
elucidation of its literal reading (Boers et al. 2009; Szczepaniak & Lew 2011) – provided it
is congruent with the figurative meaning, of course. Cognitive engagement can further be
stimulated by asking learners themselves to make an educated guess at the meaning of an
idiomatic expression, such as Being on the ropes, aided by a hint about its source domain – boxing.
CL proponents’ expectation that the above kinds of teaching initiatives will benefit learners’
retention of the targeted words and phrases rests on three premises. Firstly, the attempt to
stimulate cognitive engagement with target vocabulary ties in with the Levels of Processing
model of memory (Cermak & Craik 1979), which holds that ‘deep’ processing of information
(including vocabulary) is conducive to retention. Deep processing, in this model, is processing
that involves semantic elaboration (Craik & Tulving 1975). Secondly, the type of semantic
elaboration that is prompted by CL-style teaching typically involves mental imagery. The
expectation that this will aid retention ties in with Dual Coding models of memory (Paivio
1986; Sadoski 2005), according to which associating an abstract lexical item with a mental
image renders the item more concrete and hence more memorable. Thirdly, if CL-style
presentations of lexis succeed in convincing learners that the L2 lexicon is more systematic
than they had hitherto realised, then this may instil confidence in them. This is because the
task of learning a large number of items is likely to appear more manageable if the items
are organised somehow, for example when different phrasal verbs are shown to reflect the
same conceptual metaphor and when diverse idiomatic expressions are shown to share the
same source domain.
4. Does it work?
Table 1 is an inventory of published quasi-experimental intervention studies in which the

retention of words or phrases by groups of learners who received CL-style instruction was
compared to that of groups who received a different type of instruction about the same items.
The rightmost column of the table indicates whether the post-treatment test scores were
significantly better for the group(s) to whom the lexical items were presented along CL lines:
‘yes’ means statistically significant at least at p 0.05, unless indicated otherwise. This was the
case in the vast majority of the studies, and in none of the studies (apart from one of four
trials in Condon’s 2008 study) did comparison groups outperform the CL groups.
There is a fair amount of diversity among and within the studies, of course. The number
of participants ranged from just 24 (Boers, Demecheleer & Eyckmans 2004) to 127 (Li 2009,
study 4). Some studies measured whether participants could remember the meaning of the
items (e.g. Verspoor & Lowie 2003), others measured whether they could reproduce them
(e.g. Boers 2000a, b), and still others measured both (e.g. Boers 2001).
I have included in the inventory only studies concerned with vocabulary. For CL approaches
to other kinds of targets, I refer the reader to chapters in De Knop & De Rycker (2008), Holme
(2009), Littlemore (2009), De Knop, Boers & De Rycker (2010) and Littlemore & Juchem-
Grundmann (2010). It is in the area of vocabulary that most of the empirical work on the
effects of CL-style instruction has been done so far, though, and the inventory indicates that
by and large that work has been favourable towards CL.
It is worth mentioning that this inventory represents but a segment of the existing research
literature on CL-style vocabulary instruction. Excluded are quasi-experimental studies that
do not investigate effects on RETENTION, but rather focus on the benefits of CL-style pedagogy
for vocabulary comprehension (e.g. Lindstromberg & Boers 2005; Guo 2007). Also excluded
are studies in which variants of CL-inspired instruction are weighed against each other (e.g.
Skoufaki 2008) and investigations of the influence of learner characteristics (such as cognitive
style) on the effectiveness of CL instruction (Boers, Eyckmans & Stengers 2006). Nor are
studies included that did not involve a comparison group (Tyler 2008), that is, a group that
engaged with the target items for a similar amount of time as the CL-instructed group but
was guided by a different kind of instruction.
I cannot guarantee that my inventory is complete, as some published studies may have
escaped my attention. Besides, there are certainly several UNpublished studies (such as Ph.D.
and M.A. dissertations), which are not represented here.
Also, some caution is in order when interpreting the results of individual studies. Firstly, it
could be argued that some of the studies (e.g. Boers 2000a) lack sufficiently precise pre-test
measures. Secondly, some of the studies (e.g. Boers 2000b, study 1) involved only an immediate
Table 1 An inventory of quasi-experimental intervention studies on the effect of CL-informed

treatments on vocabulary retention.
CL group better retention

Study Targets for learning of treated lexical items?
Kövecses & Szabó (1996) Phrasal verbs with up and down Yes, but no significance
calculated
Boers (2000a) Metaphoric word uses in economics (e.g. Yes
hurdles; bail out; wean off)
Boers (2000b, study 1) Metaphors to talk about anger (e.g. Yes
fuming; bite someone’s head off)
Boers (2000b, study 2) Phrasal verbs with in, out, up and down Yes
Boers (2000b, study 3) Metaphoric word uses in economics (e.g. Yes
plunge; peak; soar; slide)
Boers (2001) Figurative idioms (e.g. a dummy run; get Yes
into gear; a chink in one’s armour)
Verspoor & Lowie (2003) Metaphoric word uses (e.g. bulge; grapple; Yes
smother)
Csabi (2004) Uses of hold and keep (incl. phrasal verbs Yes
and idioms)
Boers, Demecheleer & Figurative idioms (e.g. cut no ice with Yes
Eyckmans (2004) someone; waiting in the wings)
Morimoto & Loewen (2007) Uses of break and over The same
Berendi, Csabi & Kövecses Metaphors to talk about anger (e.g. blow Yes
(2008) off steam; add fuel to the fire)
Condon (2008) Phrasal verbs with in, out, up and down Yes, in 3 of 4 trials
Li (2009, study 1)a Metaphoric word uses (e.g. regurgitate; Yes
downhill; erupt)
Li (2009, study 4) Figurative idioms (e.g. hit the ceiling; call Yes
the shots; blow the whistle)
Li (2009, study 5) Proverbs (e.g. a rolling stone gathers no moss; Yes
look before you leap)
Cho (2010) Uses of the prepositions at, in and on Yes
Gao & Meng (2010) Metaphors to talk about anger Yes in 1 of 3 trials
Tyler, Mueller & Ho (2010) Modal verbs could, would, should and must Yes
Yasuda (2010) Phrasal verbs with into, up, down, out and The sameb
off
Notes:
a. Li’s (2009) publication of the author’s Ph.D. dissertation (2002) reports five quasi-experimental
studies. Studies 2 and 3 are not included here because they compare variants of CL-informed
instruction rather than comparing CL instruction to a non-CL treatment.
b. In Yasuda (2010) one of the aims was to assess the learners’ ability to autonomously apply the
CL insights they had acquired during instruction about one series of phrasal verbs to work out the
correct particle of phrasal verbs in another series. While the CL groups did not outperform the
comparison groups on the ‘taught’ items, they did outperform them on the items assumed to be new
to the students. Kövecses & Szabó (1996) reported a similar finding. An evaluation of the possibility
of learners using CL techniques independently, for example outside the language classroom, is made
in Boers (2011).
post-treatment test: no delayed post-test to ascertain whether the benefits for retention were
durable. Thirdly, in some of the studies the superior performance of the CL groups may be
ascribed to more than the CL ingredient in their input. For example, the comparison group
would in some studies (e.g. Boers 2000b, study 2) receive target vocabulary in the format
of one longish list, whereas the same input would be segmented in the CL treatment to
reflect metaphor categories. Better retention in the latter condition is thus not necessarily the
product of metaphor awareness per se, but perhaps (also) a side effect of having cut up the
information into more easily digestible bits (something I call ‘goulash versus nouvelle cuisine’
design). Another example is when the recall test followed a treatment where the CL group
acquired a better understanding of the lexical items, which is likely to have given them an
edge over the comparison group (e.g. Beréndi et al. 2008). Potentially confounding variables
are also found in studies where the CL treatment engaged the participants not only differently
but also in more ways than the comparison treatment (e.g. Li 2009, study 5) or where the CL
group devoted more time to the lexical items that would be the object of the post-test (e.g.
Tyler, Mueller & Ho 2010).
It must also be conceded that in two of the studies the gains between pre-test and post-test
obtained through the CL-style instruction were arguably too small to warrant pedagogical
recommendations. While the CL groups outperformed the comparison groups to a statistically
significant degree, this was probably due to the poor performance of the latter. For example,
in Tyler et al.’s (2010) study (on modal verbs), the students who had received the CL-inspired
instruction gained on average just 2.6 out of 32 test items between pre- and post-test. The
comparison group made no progress. In Cho’s (2010) study (on prepositions) the CL group
gained on average only 1.5 on a 26-item test. The comparison group actually regressed.
Cho (2010) is an exception among the studies reviewed here in that a statistical measure
of effect size is reported (partial eta squared 0.17 in the delayed post-test). I have not been
able to work out an average effect size across the collection – as has become customary
in meta-analyses – because standard deviation data is absent from too many of the (older)
publications.
In short, there are undeniably a number of problems with the individual studies listed in
the above inventory. At the same time, it is also undeniable that, collectively, the studies begin
to constitute a body of evidence that is hard to dismiss out of hand. As always, more research
would definitely be welcome to confirm and fine-tune the findings. In addition, it would be
worth finding out if the effectiveness of CL-informed interventions could be enhanced by
aligning them better with insights from ‘mainstream’ approaches to L2 vocabulary. That is
the question we will turn to next.
5. Talking to the ‘mainstream’
5.1 The desirability of distributed learning
The CL-style presentation of figuratively used words and phrases used in the intervention
studies often involves groupings under the conceptual metaphors or source domains that
they are derived from. Whether presenting vocabulary items in sets facilitates learning is a
matter of some debate, however. Several studies have revealed that learning new words that
are semantically related (e.g. words for professions, words for clothes, words for personality
traits) takes longer than learning semantically unrelated words (Tinkham 1997; Waring 1997;
Finkbeiner & Nicol 2003; Erten & Tekin 2008). Apparently, the semantic commonality of
the co-presented words increases the risk of confusion. This risk is especially high when the
words show formal resemblances as well. Teaching the words lemon and melon together in a set
of words for fruit is not advisable. The risk of confusion is reduced if one of two confusable
words has had the time to settle down in long-term memory first: if lemon is already well
established in its allotted semantic space, then melon, as a new kid on the block, is less likely
to compete for that space. In short, the obvious way of reducing the risk of erroneous cross-
associations between related words is to learn one word well first and only learn the other word
later.
The CMT-type groupings of figurative expressions seem different from the semantic sets
that have been found unadvisable, however. Let’s take the following set of idioms from the
source domain of boxing: flex your muscles, lower your guard, take it on the chin, be on the ropes, and
throw in the towel. Each occupies a slot in a scenario or ‘frame’. This is comparable to a set of
words such as castle, dark, haunted and scream, which also conjure up a frame (a ghost story).
This is the kind of organisation of vocabulary which IS believed to be helpful for learning
(Nation 2000). Still, even in this kind of grouped presentation, it would probably be unwise
to present a lot of (unfamiliar) items in one go. Items (e.g. stick your neck out, be in a tight corner
and be down for the count) can be added when the time is ripe.
A radical adherence to distributed learning is not easy to marry with the exigencies of
vocabulary building that we lamented in the introduction to this article, so we may have to
settle for a compromise. But what are we to make of the way highly polysemous words, such
as prepositions and multipurpose verbs, have been presented in the CL intervention studies?
This typically involved lessons on the diverse uses of a couple of words and how these uses
form a semantic network around a core sense. This may seem memory-friendly at first sight,
but digesting information about a dozen different uses of a word (e.g. on the bus; on Sunday; on
the phone) and their distinction from neighbouring words, each also with a dozen different uses
(e.g. in bed; in the morning; in trouble; at work; at night; mad at him) is a case of massed learning, just
the same. It is not surprising that it is precisely the studies which presented participants with
this kind of learning challenge that produced the smallest effects.
A systematic approach to polysemy need not in pedagogical practice coincide with an
intensive ‘let’s now learn everything there is to know about this word’ procedure. As with
idioms, teachers can draw students’ attention to a novel usage of a ‘known’ polyseme as it
happens to come up in context and so trace the connection to its basic sense as the opportunity
presents itself. It seems to me that this ‘teach as the need arises’ approach could make CL-style
instruction more palatable.
It would also make the approach more faithful to the usage-based nature of language. It
is remarkable that in the majority of the studies reviewed here, the target vocabulary was
poorly contextualised, so the input was lacking in cues regarding common usage patterns:
just the kind of cues that fuel L1 acquisition.
Unfortunately, there is still a dearth of research into the effects of distributed (‘as the
opportunity presents itself’) CL-style interventions.
5.2 Issues of selection
Of course, researchers sometimes choose low-frequency words as target items in learning

experiments in order to control for prior knowledge, and this also holds true for some of
the studies reviewed here. Still, one may wonder about the utility of the type of lexical items
that are targeted in some of them. A question I have often been asked is why we would
want to spend precious class time on idioms. This scepticism is certainly warranted, as there
are so many more frequent words and formulaic sequences that deserve prioritisation in a
vocabulary programme. Still, there are some reasons why a blanket dismissal of idioms as
targets for learning would not be in the best interest of at least some groups of learners. Firstly,
idioms pose comprehension problems, even in contexts that are rich in clues (e.g. Boers,
Eyckmans & Stengers 2007). Littlemore et al. (2011), for example, report that university
lecturers’ use of figurative phrases is a major source of misunderstandings for international
students. Cross-cultural differences throw up extra obstacles for L2 idiom comprehension
(Hu & Fong 2010). Misunderstanding idioms can put a strain on communication especially
because idioms fulfil crucial socio-pragmatic functions, such as conveying an evaluation and
steering the course of conversation (O’Keeffe, McCarthy & Carter 2007: 80−99).
A second reason why idioms cannot be discarded out of hand as items worthy of learning
at least for some groups of learners is that, as a class, they are not as rare as has often
been assumed. Boers & Lindstromberg (2009: 67), for example, found a higher frequency of
figurative idioms (e.g. on the same wavelength; off the hook) in a popular crime novel than they found
strong verb-noun collocations (e.g. make a decision; tell the truth) (ibid: 42). The irony is that I
have seldom heard anyone question the usefulness of learning collocations, even though they
are generally considered less likely to cause comprehension problems. Still, it is self-evident
that efforts need to be made to align targets for learning with the needs of the learners, and
CL pedagogy as described so far does appear most at home when this alignment is made at a
relatively high level of proficiency, when learners are ready to turn their attention to the less
frequent uses of words.
The quest for non-arbitrary phenomena in vocabulary goes on, however. One novelty is
the exploration of motivation at the level of phonology rather than semantics. For example,
there is robust evidence that phonological repetition (alliteration, rhyme, etc.) plays a part
in the formation of word partnerships (Boers & Lindstromberg 2009, Ch. 6). In a bank of
5,667 multiword units sampled from the Macmillan English Dictionary, no fewer than 737 (13%)
display alliteration (e.g. time will tell; peer pressure; cut corners). If rhyme and assonance are added
to the mix (e.g. brain drain; small talk), the proportion of phonologically repetitive multiword
lexis reaches almost 20%. Some types of formulaic sequences, such as binomial phrases (e.g.
part and parcel) and similes (e.g. busy as a bee) are particularly prone to these phonological
repetitions (32% and 54%, respectively). It seems safe to say that in the development of word
partnerships, sameness attracts. Importantly for the purpose of this article, experimental
evidence suggests that alerting language learners to alliteration, rhyme or assonance in the
word strings they meet positively influences their retention (Lindstromberg & Boers 2008b,
c). Another addition to the bag of tricks for engaging learners with vocabulary exploits the
occasionally felt ‘fit’ between the form and the meaning of a word. For example, when asked
whether the rare word harageous means kind or brutal, many a respondent will (correctly) guess
it is the latter. The form or sound of words is not a reliable clue to guess the meaning of a
word, of course, but asking students to judge whether the meaning of a newly learned word
fits its form/sound does appear to help retention (Deconinck, Boers & Eyckmans 2010).
5.3 Different kinds of learning, different kinds of knowledge
In the introduction to this article, we mentioned the processing advantage that formulaic
sequences afford native speakers: they facilitate fluency in processing and in speech. Native
speakers enjoy this advantage thanks to familiarity with the conventionalised word strings
they have been exposed to time and again. According to Wray (2002), though, this is not
the only explanation for the fact that natives process formulaic sequences faster than non-
natives. Put simply, in her model the native speaker’s resource of formulaic language consists
largely of sequences that were acquired (in childhood) holistically, so they are ready to be
retrieved from the lexicon as prefabricated units. Adult L2 learners, she believes, are much
more inclined to adopt an analytic, word-by-word mode of processing. It has been suggested
(e.g. Lewis 1997) that L2 learners should try to bypass the word-by-word learning mode
and learn formulaic sequences as integral chunks. It should be clear from the examples of
CL interventions given throughout this article that, instead of steering learners towards a
more holistic mode of processing multiword lexis, CL pedagogy actually intends to harness
learners’ analytic abilities (e.g. Liu 2010). CL encourages learners to wonder why certain
words collocate, how the meaning of an idiom is connected to its original use, how different
uses of a word are interrelated, and so on. Let’s face it: these are mental pleasures that native
speakers seldom indulge in.
There is no absolute reason, of course, why L2 learning should mimic L1 acquisition.
Given the different matrices of L1 acquisition and adult L2 learning, it is to be expected that
even highly advanced L2 learners’ performance will be fuelled by knowledge of a different
nature from that of the native speaker. If the cognitive engagement brought about by CL-style
instruction helps to compensate for the far fewer opportunities for incidental learning that
the adult L2 learner enjoys in comparison with L1 acquisition, then, surely, this is to be
cherished. As long as one appreciates that the (explicit) knowledge it generates is not the
ideal fluency facilitator. (See Barcroft, Sommers & Sunderman, 2011, concerning another
mnemonic technique – one outside the CL camp – the Keyword Method.) Let’s put it this
way: if successful, a CL approach may serve as a high-speed train to Word City, but its
terminus is in a suburb. That’s okay, as long as one realises it’s still a bit of a stroll downtown,
where the real action is.
That is why the language-focused learning strand needs to be complemented by other
opportunities for learning, provided by message-focused input, message-focused output and
fluency development activities (Nation 2007). One of the great dilemmas for language
instructors is, time and again, to decide whether to ‘teach’ a linguistic item/feature or to
‘leave it alone’. It is decision-making informed by the chances of incidental uptake of the
item, and those chances will depend on a complex interplay between the profile of the
learners (including likely interference from their L1), the samples of target language they are
exposed to and in what mode (reading or listening), and the frequency therein of the linguistic
item/feature concerned (e.g. Alejo, Piquer & Reveriego 2010, on phrasal verbs in the Spanish
EFL programme). How much leeway is given to the language-focused learning strand inside
the classroom will obviously depend on the extent to which the other strands are present in
the students’ lives outside the classroom, but the general need to strike a balance inevitably
calls for a judicious use of instructional techniques, including CL-inspired ones.
6. By way of conclusion
Is there a niche for CL in L2 vocabulary instruction? I believe there is. Non-arbitrary features
of language can serve as stimuli for learners’ cognitive engagement with at least some L2
words and phrases, and this engagement aids vocabulary retention. In the face of the daunting
challenge of vocabulary learning this is a welcome resource, even if the knowledge it generates
is qualitatively different from that acquired by native speakers.
More empirical studies (especially longitudinal ones) would be welcome to fine-tune the
evidence for the pedagogical merits of CL applications and to explore ways of enhancing
their effectiveness. With regard to the latter, the incorporation of insights about distributed,
in-context learning seems a way forward. Last but not least, the recent interest in motivation
at the level of linguistic form (such as the role of alliteration as a match-maker) looks promising
as a means of extending the scope of pedagogy-oriented CL.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the five anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback on an early
draft of this article. I would also like to express my gratitude to the organisers of the 2011
Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics for inviting me to give the plenary
address on which this article is based.
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FRANK BOERS is an associate professor at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies of
Victoria University of Wellington. His initial interests were lexicology and metaphor, but most of his
recent research concerns second language acquisition, especially the teaching of L2 vocabulary and
phraseology. His work has appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching Research
and System. He is co-author (with Seth Lindstromberg) of Optimizing a lexical approach to instructed second
language acquisition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-editor of two collective volumes in Mouton de
Gruyter’s Applications of Cognitive Linguistics Series.

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Lang. Teach. (2013), 46.

Cognitive Linguistic approaches to teaching vocabulary:

Frank Boers Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

2. Why turn to Cognitive Linguistics?

One yardstick for estimating the likely effectiveness of a vocabulary-learning procedure is

3. Examples of CL-inspired proposals for vocabulary instruction

Table 1 is an inventory of published quasi-experimental intervention studies in which the

Table 1 An inventory of quasi-experimental intervention studies on the effect of CL-informed

CL group better retention

5. Talking to the ‘mainstream’

5.1 The desirability of distributed learning

5.2 Issues of selection

Of course, researchers sometimes choose low-frequency words as target items in learning

5.3 Different kinds of learning, different kinds of knowledge

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