In this paper, I explore the presence and function of English motion patterns in a corpus comprising various narrative genres, and suggest ways in which research into their rhetorical function might complement other approaches in the literature as well as help teachers introduce Spanish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to this idiosyncratic feature of English narratives. The working hypothesis is that the use of motion patterns may also be influenced by genre. This genre approach to motion patterns may, on the one hand, shed some light on the rhetorical or communicative motivation of motion patterns in English and, on the other, help teachers choose and exploit the best input in order to include such patterns in the EFL classroom in a way that goes beyond a lexical- or grammatical-only approach, that is, one that focuses on the pragmatic aspects involved in the use of motion patterns. Keywords: manner of motion verbs, narrative genres, input, cross-linguistic influence, typological differences, EFL teaching-learning
