Педагогические науки/5. Современные методы преподавания

К.пед.н. Боднар С.В.

Одесский институт финансов Украинского государственного университета финансов и международной торговли, Украина

Teaching vocabulary to students majoring

in Economics and Business

For decades vocabulary teaching has been very popular in language teaching and widely discussed in professional literature on such a topic.

Vocabulary is an essential resource for effective communication. The more words you know, the more meanings you express. A lexical mistake often causes misunderstanding, incomprehension, or in rare cases even offence while a grammar mistake rarely does, said John Sinclair (1996).

EFL learners spend a significant time learning lexis. But anyway they don’t know the bulk of the lexicon because they learn the words passively in the lists of terms that come to them every week, given by teachers. So, the vital question arises. How can language learners master a great part of the English vocabulary and really apply the words in the business communication? The answer is that most of the lexicon should not be taught but incidentally learned. Learners are constantly acquiring new lexical items whenever they come in contact with the language, be it listening to the teacher talk in class, watching a film or using the internet, reading from a different variety of authentic reading materials (newspapers, magazines, instructions, books, booklets). That’s why the teachers are recommended to concentrate not on teaching definite lexical items to the students but on explaining cognitive strategies to make the acquisition of the bulk of the lexicon more effective.

The most important learning strategy is a cognitive strategy. Students should do all their actions conciously. Before simple learning words by heart they should be explained some language rules: 1) language mainly consists of lexical structures, not separate words, 2) learners of English should define themselves the main types of lexical structures (collocations, fixed and semi-fixed expressions), 3) they need to develop skills that help to notice the lexical chunks in spoken and written texts, 4) it is not enough just to know the meaning of a word. Students also need to know: a) what words under study are usually associated with, b) if the word has any particular grammatical characteristics, c) how it is pronounced, d) that new words should be learned not in isolation but in phrases, e) adjectives should be learned together with the nouns they are often associated with and vice versa, f) verbs - with the definite structure and nouns associated with them, g) any words - with their fixed prepositions if they have them.

But before explaining this learning strategy to students majoring in economics and business we should underline that a careful attention must be given to the selection of the specific aspects of lexis that teachers need to focus on.

For the purpose of real communication, there is a strong argument for teaching professionally-oriented economic words necessary for the students majoring in economics. With this purpose we are going to define the notion “English economic terminological words”.

“English economic terminological words” include some groups of words: general economic terms; professionalisms (words which are characteristic of the language of bankers, auditors, book-keepers (balance sheet, current assets, financial statement); fixed expressions (on the one hand, on the other hand); professional idioms (а bear market, а bull market); verbal expression of number and symbol indicators (the loan was made at six % interest per annum; they got one third of profit; GDP rose by three %; they have learned “c” – a programming language; “=” - equals); Business English abbreviations (CEO - Chief Executive Officer, MD - Managing Director, WTO - World Trade Organization); terminological neologisms which reflect the transformations in the business sphere (goldilocks economy – temporal state of economy which is characetized by its stable growth and low level of inflation; slugflation – a combination of sluggish growth and rising inflation in the economy).

So after selecting the words which should be taught to the students majoring in economy we are supposed to suggest some useful recommendations for economic vocabulary learning. 1. Don’t teach vocabulary out of context. Try to avoid teaching isolated words. Either collocate them (e.g., bank account, savings account, etc.) or include the word in a realistic structure (I’d like to open an account). 2. With semi-fixed expressions, give other examples of similar words that are also used in that structure (to run the company, to run the enterprise, to run the bank). 3. Don’t spend too much time on fixed expressions, particularly idiomatic ones, as they are normally not used that frequently. 4. Adapt the most difficult exercises to the level of the students’ knowledge. 5. Systematize the lexical material. If you understand how individual words are related in lexical structures, you can increase the amount of vocabulary that can be dealt with at the lesson learning words according to the rules.

There is one more point to be highlighted in the article. It is the usage of lexical games at the process of teaching. Games are considered useful not only for small children but for the students too. Lexical games can be used at any stage of the lesson: for warming up activity, for introducing a new material, for repeating a topic, for summerizing new lexical information. There are many interactive games which can help to focus the students’ attention on the words under study. Let illustrate some examples: 1) explain the meaning of the word with your own words without a special preparation, 2) find the match for the term, 3) find synonyms, 4) find antonyms, 5) do the crossword puzzle, 6) find the mistake, 7) find the beginning/the end of the word, 8) play the game “crosses and nulls”, 9) guess the word by the first letter and the last letter, 10) guess as many words as you can by the first letter on a definite topic, 11) cross out an odd term from the given list of words, 12) make up your own sentences with the given symbols or numbers. Such interactive lexical games have the following functions: educational, communicative, relaxing, psychological, developing, entertaining. And besides, they can be used while learning any topic according to the curriculum during in-class and out-class activity.

To sum up, we can state that the presented activities are certainly not the only ones that can be used to encourage active vocabulary learning. There are many of them. But the given ones are rather helpful for developing the habit of individual enriching the students’ vocabulary and provide an indispensable foundation for the future skills of speaking and writing.