Boxer Pants, G-String, Stockings and You Know What Gear: Towards Lexical Fields Aided Vocabulary Instruction

oleh: Grzegorz A. Kleparski, Anna Borkowska

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: University of Bucharest Publishing House 2018-06-01

Deskripsi

The major objective set to this paper is to investigate the problem of how lexical fields may be applied in vocabulary teaching at various proficiency levels of formal education, namely the primary and secondary school. The analysis of several lexical fields, such as ANIMALS, SPORTS, TRANSPORT, and HOSPITAL indicates that word groupings may be delimited by the age of the students, proficiency level as well as cognitive skills. Rather unsurprisingly, teaching materials are more complex for older students but, at the same time, children may also be provided with lexical affinities, be it synonyms, antonyms or basic collocations. The experiments conducted among two different English philology groups were aimed at viewing CLOTHES and UNDERWEAR as multidimensional and thought-provoking fields which may successfully stimulate students to identify relationships between particular lexical items. The experiment proved to be beneficial for the didactic process owing to the fact that grouping has long been recognised as one of the most effective ways of introducing lexical items. The participants exemplified a variety of subcategories, and although some of them seem fairly obvious, it must be concluded that lexical fields as such encouraged the language learners to think critically and carefully since particular elements may be perceived as politically incorrect and inappropriate in actual teaching practice.