How to boost long-term memory in the process of learning foreign language vocabulary

Learning a foreign language is not a single-plan process: we have to learn grammar and communicative functions alongside with vocabulary. The goal of this presentation is to highlight the problems emerging in the course of learning foreign vocabulary. Students employ mechanical rote-learning method striving to remember the new words only till the day of the test, which means they enter the active vocabulary into their short-term memory only. This particular way of acquiring vocabulary never brings good results - it is very time consuming, a vast majority of information is immediately forgotten and the grades are poor, thus leading to low motivation to study foreign vocabulary and inadequate language improvement. To address the abovementioned issues, 60 Vytautas Magnus University C1 level students of 2018 Spring semester and 70 of 2018/2019 Fall semester took part in a questionnaire concentrating on the vocabulary learning problems and the ways to solve them. Having analyzed the data, the following conclusions can be drawn: the mechanical learning process is believed to be ineffective, the initial step of learning vocabulary should be conducted out of lecture-room, and later the new vocabulary items should be consolidated in class through a range of creative individual and group tasks. In order to boost students’ long-term memory, it is absolutely necessary to give classroom time for the revision of the acquired material two or three weeks later. The researchers believe that these insights will lead to highly positive results in the field of foreign vocabulary acquisitionAnglų kalbos skyriusVytauto Didžiojo universiteta