Researching a construction grammar for the classroom

This paper recounts the production, piloting and appraisal of materials designed to present a construction grammar at a Hong Kong secondary school. Constructions were first isolated from academically relevant texts then explored as productive types rather than fixed tokens. When taught in the way described, constructions have a strong degree of uptake and will be re-used without explicit prompting, leading to a signifi cant positive impact on the accuracy of written work.