LEARNING FOREIGN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN PSYCHOLINGUISTICS: A COGNITIVE APPROACH

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of teaching vocabulary in the educational process of foreign languages, the analysis of modern approaches to its teaching, which exist in modern psychological and pedagogical literature, the search for the most effective methods of teaching this aspect of a foreign language. This article attempts to shed light on some theories and assumptions regarding the role of consciousness and intuition in learning a foreign language, namely its lexical stock. We are talking about conscious and subconscious learning of words, which have been actively discussed recently among researchers. In modern scientific literature, we can find three points of view on this issue, which we try to analyze in this publication. Supporters of the conscious approach consider it the best one, provide evidence of its effectiveness and the shortcomings of the opposite approach. Representatives of the other point of view defend the advantages of the unconscious approach and consider deliberate memorization of vocabulary to be ineffective. A number of researchers recognize both approaches, acknowledge the advantages and disadvantages of the first and second, and propose a combined approach, which allows to use their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses.In order to understand in which situations it is better to use each of them, we turn to the analysis of the achievements of cognitive psycholinguistics, which over the past decades has been studying the physiological and psychological mechanisms of learning a foreign language and as a result has come to the conclusion about existence of an individual language learning style, inherent in each individual. This discovery is of great importance for the organization of the process of learning foreign languages, as it allows us to understand that different learning methods and types of exercises are effective for different students, and thus to choose the appropriate ones for each individual situation.In our study, we focus on two global styles in learning foreign languages – analytical and communicative. In the course of the study, we tried to analyze their main characteristics and the corresponding teaching methods or training exercises types. A comparative analysis of these methods and types of exercises proved their identity with the two approaches mentioned above – conscious and unconscious, where conscious learning corresponds to the analytical learning style, and subconscious learning corresponds to the communicative one. This allowed us to conclude that for students with a predominant analytical style, the conscious approach will be more appropriate and effective, while for students with the communicative style of learning foreign languages, a subconscious approach will be preferable. Despite the feasibility of using both approaches for all styles, it is better to rely more on the one that is appropriate for a given specific person, which will significantly increase the effectiveness of learning FL vocabulary on the one hand and help teachers to use more rationally approach in the use of conscious and subconscious approaches in the practice of learning lexical material, resolving disputes about the advantages of any of them.