Abstract:

The challenges of distance education foregrounded by now and then repeated lockdowns in Russia escalated the problem of developing students’ communicative skills. The authors of the article have tried different ways of solving this problem: resorted to Internet resources, used different ways of presenting the material (visual, audial, motoric-based), and provided partnership tasks. However, diversifying ways of making students learn and use new words proved to be the most effective. Difficulties that Russian learners of English face are connected not only with memorizing words but also with confusing their meanings and misusing their forms. Having studied the works of western and Russian scholars on the problem and having analyzed their own teaching experience spinning from 25 to 54 years the authors of the article present the results of the experiment carried out within a period of offline interspersed with online learning (a year and a half) and aimed at developing students’ communicative skills through enlarging their vocabulary and enhancing their ability to use it in appropriate situations.

The authors describe a complex of tasks, exercises and special techniques effective in teaching and learning lexis both online and offline, including tasks on association, jigsaws, grouping words according to different criteria, ranking words, making word categories, composing rhymes and riddles, enlarging statements and so on. The importance of systematic revision of the vocabulary in new situations is emphasized. The whole variety of tasks and exercises implemented in the complex is invoked to demonstrate words’ combinatory characteristics and to promote their use for practical purposes.

The principles determining the choice of techniques for the complex are: showing diversity in the use of the vocabulary, demonstrating words in different combinations and situations, involving different levels of the language (a word level-a phrase level-a sentence level-a text level), structuring a hierarchy of tasks and exercises placed in the order of increasing difficulty, pointing out interconnection and interdependence of the used techniques, combining work at lexis with other activities, using digital resources, educational platforms. All these principles ensure efficiency of the proposed complex in enhancing communicative skills through lexis learning.

Keywords:

Foreign language teaching, enlarging the vocabulary, lexis learning, developing communicative skills, a complex of exercises, word combinatory characteristics.