One step closer to the target: Using Construction Grammar to teach the expression of motion events to Japanese learners of English.

According to Talmy's typology of the lexicalization of motion events (Talmy 1985, 2000), English is a satellite-framed language while Japanese is verb-framed. This study presents some of the verb-framed properties transferred by Japanese learners into their L2 English and investigates the possibility of restructuring the L1 schema for the lexicalization of motion events in L2 through instruction. A class experiment in which two groups of learners were instructed to focus on verbal semantics and constructions, respectively, indicates that teaching focusing on motion constructions is likely to yield better results, in the sense of fostering a more native-like rhetorical style, than teaching focusing on lexical items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]