I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

decontextualized vocabulary learning, vocabulary, learning, English, contextual learning

This article considers the problem of decontextualized vocabulary learning. Our observation that learners of English, who have at least B1+ level, often report having difficulties recalling the English variant for a specific weekday without having previously enumerated all of them as a sequence as well as distinguishing to ski and to skate prompted this study. This is confirmed by our survey data (82% of respondents had difficulty in remembering the names of the days of the week, and 52% had difficulty in distinguishing between the two winter sports. This kind of vocabulary is studied at the early stages of the education process and is learnt mechanically by drilling. According to the available data on vocabulary learning, it has been found that this method of memorizing is significantly inferior to the contextual one, which makes our study relevant. Confirming the hypothesis, we tried to contextualize the lexemes through a presentation highlighting the origins of the names of the days of the week, providing associations with each of them as well as combinations with words to ski / to skate and a parallel to the long vowel sound and equipment used in these sports. In the second survey, 82% and 52% of respondents who had previously had difficulties remembering the names of days of the week and sports, respectively, had to say whether the material and context had helped them. 85% and 90% of respondents reported a decrease in difficulty. From this we can conclude that the contextual learning of the studied lexical units by means of associations, examples and visual elements led to their improved recognition and comprehension. In addition, this problem is quite common, as the respondents provided a significant number of similar complexity pairs/groups of lexical units which can be investigated in the future.

Дымова Алена Вячеславовна – кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры иностранных языков и перевода Уральского федерального университета, г. Екатеринбург, Россия, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2931-5199, dym.alyona@yandex.ru

Карева Виктория Юрьевна – старший преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков и образовательных технологий Уральского федерального университета, г. Екатеринбург, Россия, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4667-3775, viktoriya-aksy@yandex.ru