Special issue articles
Fostering the learning of the Russian motion verbs system in Italian-speaking students
An experimental study inspired by embodied approaches to language teaching
This study reports on the differential effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches to teaching L1-Italian students
the Russian verbs of motion (глаголы движения, VoMs). The first is a Cognitive Linguistics, embodied approach, where the teacher
used techniques such as image schemas, drawings and bodily activation to help the learners explore and understand the logic of
VoMs. The second is a classic PPP approach, that works with mnemonic exercises, drills, and reproduction techniques, and that used
classic metalinguistic terms to explain VoMs.
54 L1-Italian Russian students enrolled at the second year of University have been recruited in the study. Two
groups were created: group A received a 160 minutes embodied treatment about VoMs, whereas group B received a 160 minutes
classical PPP treatment on VoMs.
The informants have been tested in a classical pre, post and delayed-post test fashion with three different
temporized tasks. Results show an accrued competence on VoMs of group A, that outperformed group B in all the tests. The relevance
of these findings for L2 teaching will be discussed.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Embodied and CL-inspired language teaching
- 3.The Russian verbs of motion system
- 4.Methodology
- 4.1Participants
- 4.2The control treatment
- 4.3The experimental treatment
- 4.4The timescale of the study
- 4.5The tests for data elicitation
- 5.Results
- 5.1Timed acceptability judgement test
- 5.2Sentence-picture matching test
- 5.3Multiple choice completion
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References