A cognitive linguistic approach to teaching conditionals

Grammar sections in textbooks of English as a Second/Foreign Language are often created following the principles of traditional grammar, which is evident in their form-focused presentations of grammatical structures, such as conditional sentences. In cognitive linguistics, on the other hand, grammar is perceived as a meaningful whole, with an emphasis on contextualised presentation, the inductive teaching method and asking questions as a means to explore the cognitive motivation and logic behind these structures. Various researchers have devised classifications of conditional sentences so that they could be easily organised and presented in textbooks, with the most common categorisation consisting of types 1-3, often including type zero. This study, therefore, aims to examine whether textbook authors have remained at this level of presentation or have begun to align with the cognitive perspective, focusing on the grammar sections of selected English textbooks used in Croatia. In addition, conditional sentences obtained from these sections are analysed using the English Corpus for SKELL 3.11 to determine their frequency and conventionality in language. The results show that most textbooks include similar presentations of fairly conventional conditional sentences that resemble lists of rules, where the focus is mostly on form. However, the inductive method is becoming more widespread and one textbook stands out due to its variety of example sentences and inclusion of certain meaning-related elements. These findings can be used to demonstrate areas for textbook authors (and teachers) where changes could be executed by adding insights from cognitive linguistics, provided that future cognitive research leads to the simplification of the matter to enable easier presentation/teaching of conditionals.