The thesis is devoted to the problem of formation future teachers’ German lexical competence using authentic literary texts.
The methodology of formation of German lexical competence has been theoretically substantiated and practically worked out. Theoretical, psycholinguistic and methodological foundations of formation of German lexical competence have been defined. The features of the psychological and psycholinguistic nature of vocabulary have been specified: the psychological structure of the word; semantic structure of the word (a system of values and connections inherent to it, the meaning and concepts) have been analyzed. The structure of lexical competence has been specified and its components (lexical knowledge, skills, lexical awareness, personal language and speech experience) have been highlighted.
The idea of the integrated development of lexical knowledge, skills and lexical awareness in reading, speaking and writing using authentic literary works has been grounded.
German lexical competence is a complex formation, which includes: knowledge (of semantic content; semantic structure; word usage rules: semantic, stylistic and collocation rules; syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between the words); lexical skills (classification, generalization, semantization, categorizing, actions on the assessment of the correctness of the words usage), lexical awareness (of the main difficulties that arise in the process of lexical competence acquisition, evaluation of the usage of lexical units according to their linguistic and sociocultural characteristics).
The principles of material selection, in particular authentic literary works (the principle of aesthetic influence on the reader, vocabulary-stylistic, the literature system principle, the principle of the speech potential) and lexical units (frequency of use, collocability, stylistic unlimitedness, semantic value, differentiation of the sphere of use) have been outlined. The principle of the authentic influence on the reader deals with the aesthetic potential and aesthetic value of the literary work; the vocabulary-stylistic principle takes into account language and literature tendencies, idiolect and linguistic uniqueness, the analysis of the lexico-semantic level of the literary work and its stylistic features; the literature system principle deals with such characteristics of the literature as time measurement, national peculiarities, special literature characteristics (trend, genre, topic); the principle of the speech potential takes into account speech intentions that occur due to the speech functions of the literary work. According to the principles of authentic literary works and lexical units selection fifteen short stories of the post-war period and contemporary German literature have been selected.
The stages of lexical competence formation correspond to the stages of vocabulary acquisition, reading, speaking and writing. Four stages of lexical competence formation using authentic literary works (introductory motivational, operational-cognitive, stage of control and evaluation, stage of generalization) have been defined. The aims of integrated lexical competence development on each stage have been stated.
A subsystem of exercises for the German lexical competence formation has been suggested. It includes four groups of exercises aimed at activation of reader’s background knowledge, semantization of new lexical units, understanding meaning of words from the context; improving lexical knowledge of words syntactic and semantic relationships with other words, knowledge of word’s characteristics; developing lexical skills of word usage (in speaking and writing) according to the communicative purpose.
A model of the formation of German lexical competence using authentic literary works has been designed. It is characterized by interconnection of its components.
The effectiveness of the suggested methodology of the formation of German lexical competence using authentic literary works has been verified and proved during experimental teaching. It has been proved that the integrated development of receptive and reproductive lexical skills, lexical knowledge, lexical awareness in reading, speaking and writing at each stage within the processing of each selected literary work promotes to the effectiveness of the formation of German lexical competence. Based on theoretical study and outcomes resulting from the development and experimental validation of the new methodology, methodological recommendations for German language teachers have been complied.
Key words: future German teachers, German lexical competence, authentic literary text, lexical unit, knowledge, skills, principles of material selection, subsystem of exercises.
