Abstract:

The aim of the study is to determine the necessary conditions for effective retention of words and collocations while learning a second foreign language. The topicality of the study is supported by a greater spread of the Lexical Approach in English teaching gradually embracing other European languages. The principal claim about lexis being more important than grammar has been endorsed by a number of researchers (Lewis, Thornbury). The development of information society and the necessity to work with an enormous amount of information, which presupposes a dramatic increase in passive vocabulary, is a new challenge in foreign language teaching. The initial premise of this study is the importance of memorizing contextual meanings of words and their syntagmatic usage which is supported by philosophic ideas of Wittgenstein, neuropsychological findings (Moscow psychological school) and linguistics (Jacobson). Building on the speech production theory (Vygotsky, Luria, Akhutina), as well as the theory of lexical priming (Hoey), the article attempts to give a theoretical foundation as well as a practical basis for the necessity to amend frequently applied lexical activities and to create a typology of tasks for memorizing big amounts of lexical units which would be aimed at working with collocations, setting semantic fields and implementing other techniques of organizing lexis. The change of the typology of vocabulary tasks implies altering approach to teaching a foreign language on the whole, when the main aim becomes holistic understanding and reproducing utterances and short texts, not separate lexical units. In order to confirm the ideas presented in the article, students’ feedback was obtained from the Moscow State University students learning 2-3 foreign languages. The results of the poll practically corroborated the main ideas of the article.

Keywords:

Lexis retention, neuropsychology, lexical approach, lexical activities, student feedback, syntagmatic.