Lithuanian as a foreign language. Means for effective vocabulary learning/teaching

Abstract

The current study analyses some vocabulary usage errors that students make and discusses different illocutionary/perlocutionary effects that word misusing may have. In addition, some points that are to be taken into consideration in the hope that they can provide a new possibility for effective vocabulary learning/teaching will be highlighted. The study was carried out at Vytautas Magnus University. The data was selected randomly by analyzing written assignments from beginner to advanced level students. The students were from different countries: Austria, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Spain and the USA. The data total 70 students' written assignments (e-mails, fairy tales, recipes and opinions on different topics). The study analyses errors, where a word is used in an inappropriate context or form. The analysis has shown that the reasons for making vocabulary errors are different: the impact of English as the instructional language, the impact of LI, misleading or incomplete dictionary definitions. Though overlapping, these errors were classified as falling into the following groups: overextension, inappropriate usage of modals, reflexive and non reflexive verbs, mixing of synonymous, polysemantic words and words with similar roots or endings, and the inappropriate usage of verb prefixes.

The analysis allowed us to make some suggestions about how to help students to learn vocabulary more effectively. One of the possibilities could be a blended course where face-to-face classes are given interchangeably with an online course. The online part of the course could provide students with a vocabulary that includes examples of the most frequently used word meaning, collocations, and hypertexts with translation. This would allow more context and other necessary pragmatic information and, therefore, increase the development of students' communicative and pragmatic competence