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Lexical Approach and Development of Communicative Competence in Teaching Croatian as a Foreign Language

Abstract

When acquiring or learning a language, both native and foreign, the basis is words, the lexicon. Acoustic perception, visuality and correct writing of a single word, connecting it with concrete or abstract content and storing it in memory is a very complex process. Especially when learning a foreign language, memorizing new words, recognizing them in context, storing them in the mental lexicon, and recalling them is influenced by various factors that can make vocabulary enrichment easier or harder (Erdeljac, 2009). In Croatian as a foreign language, it is most often the morphonological level (inflection and related sound changes) that creates difficulties for students in recognizing forms and using them correctly, therefore teaching must be equally focused on the meaning and grammatical forms of words (Udier, 2009).

This paper presents a theoretically based best practice example of the model of complete lexical exercises that encourages students to independently and intensively deal with receptive and potential vocabulary on a chosen topic in order to facilitate its transition to production and thereby foster communicative competence. The exercises follow the principles of gradualism, multimodality and pragmatism. Their goal is to enable students to recognize the learned words in the context of a sentence, read and pronounce them often, and finally use them actively in monologues or dialogues. The model was applied in teaching Croatian as a foreign language with adult students and can be used for level A2 according to CEFR, and takes into account the list of special terms from the Descriptive Framework for reference level A2 (Grgić & Gulešić Machata, 2017). The paper is written in Croatian, and the teaching materials contain methodological comments and instructions, as well as keys to exercises.