The use of image schema in teaching prepositions; Case study: Preposition “Be” in Persian language

Nowadays, Cognitive semantic approach plays an important role in learning second/foreign language. However, a few experimental investigations have applied a cognitive perspective to instructed L2 learning. The main purpose of the present research is comparing impact of cognitive approach to the traditional approach in learning some frequency concepts of the preposition "be" in Persian language. First, different meanings of preposition "be“ were selected from Farhang Sokhan Anvari (1381) and then some sentences and phrases containing this preposition were investigated according to the Farsi Biamoozim (1388) in the middle level. Prior to begging the instruction, 50 non-Persian learners (woman) were selected by proficiency test at Jamee-Almostafa of Mashhad center. This group were randomly divided into control and experimental groups and then, pre-test and post-test was applied between these groups. By using SPSS, comparison of the pre-test in control and experimental group revealed that there isn’t significant difference between prior knowledge of two groups before treatment, whereas the post-test showed that there is statistically significant difference between two groups. The results indicated that experimental group which was under the training of cognitive method showed significant gains than control group who received the traditional training methods.