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Given the immense potential of cognitive linguistics for second language teaching and the need to produce more robust empirical evidence of its effectiveness for a range of learners in real classrooms, the current study set out to investigate the effectiveness of a novel cognitive linguistics-inspired approach for teaching Spanish prepositions and aspect to novice learners (n = 30). Animated videos, which were created collaboratively with students to ensure their comprehensibility, presented Principled Polysemy Networks for the prepositions por and para and the concept of boundedness for aspect (preterite and imperfect). After presentation, practice, and feedback cycles, learners made significant gains on controlled production tasks and performed as well as more advanced learners recruited in prior studies, suggesting that the cognitive linguistics approach was effective for these novices. The study found no statistically significant correlations between learning outcomes and individual difference measures of executive function, working memory, motivation, or learning style, which was cautiously interpreted as suggesting that the applied cognitive linguistics approach benefited all learners, not just a subset with particular abilities.

This paper aims to explore the shortcomings and challenges of Applied Cognitive Linguistics (ACL) in L2 classrooms and research. It examines the main issues and presents a case study with three quasi-experimental classroom studies. These experiments taught the Spanish past simple tenses using approaches informed by Cognitive Linguistics and Communicative Language Teaching, plus a control group, through a pretest/posttest design. Results favored cognitive-pedagogical instruction, but only in one production task (Alonso-Aparicio & Llopis-García, 2019). Subsequent studies replicated and extended the first, with further changes in instruction and assessment design, but found no significant differences between experimental groups in the posttest. The discussion highlights the steps taken to ensure study success, pointing out shortcomings in traditional assessment tests that favor notional-functional instruction. We suggest alternative testing tasks that consider cognitive-based approaches and new avenues for future research, aligning with Martín-Gascón et al. (2023).