A usage-based approach in linguistics takes into account frequency criteria and analogy, but also a full context of pragmatic and cultural situatedness. Usage-based models, such as cognitive linguistics and others, become more and more popular and can be applied in the domain of foreign language teaching to a great benefit of a student, especially in the case of less taught languages when generally available sources of information on language and culture are relatively scarce. In this chapter, we discuss such advantages, taking as an example Swahili taught as a foreign language. We observe that English-language textbooks of Swahili are biased toward a structuralist/generative model of description which makes certain grammatical claims difficult for a student to understand and memorize, while a usage-based explanation is straightforward and easy to grasp. We also postulate that teaching should recognize to a larger extent issues of cross-linguistic lexical anisomorphism and lack of equivalence in grammar, as well as cultural and pragmatic differences in language use between Swahili and English and possibly other native languages of a student.