Learning the perfective/imperfective aspectual alternation in L2 Italian through a Cognitive Grammar-inspired pedagogy: A quasi-experimental study

In this study, the comparable effectiveness of two pedagogical approaches in teaching L2-learners of Italian the perfective/imperfective aspectual alternation in past tenses is tested. The first is a Cognitive Grammar (CG)-inspired approach, where the teacher uses image schemas, bodily representations, and drawings to help learners explore and understand the underlying logic of Aspect and aspectual alternation. The second is a classic PPP approach, where the teacher works with mnemonic exercises, drills, and reproduction techniques, and uses classic metalinguistic terms to explain aspectual alternation. The choice of whether to use perfect or imperfect, namely the passato prossimo and the imperfetto, represents a major source of error for advanced and less advanced learners of Italian (and other Romance languages), and it seems rather resistant to traditional (i.e. PPP) grammatical instruction. Therefore, our CG-inspired proposal focuses on the presentation, through pictorial illustration and physical activation, of the reasons behind this aspectual alternation, connected to its contexts of use. The study has a classroom-based, quasi-experimental nature and includes a control and an experimental group, both made up of L2 Italian university students. Data indicate a significantly greater efficacy of the CG-inspired treatment. In the concluding section, the relevance of these findings for L2 teaching is discussed.