The use of frequency dictionaries in the process of the development of the English language lexical competence of students in IT fields

Deep knowledge of current English vocabulary is an essential quality of a competent expert in the field of IT. Various technologies of development of lexical competence are based on the indisputable statement  – lexical units (words and phrases) for students to study should be arranged according to their relevance in the daily communication in English. Objective quantitative indicators of relevance of lexical units in everyday life situations are presented in frequency dictionaries; however, their role in the process of professionally oriented foreign language teaching has not been sufficiently studied.

The purpose of the research is to increase the efficiency of the process of development of the English language lexical competence of students in IT fields by supporting and actively using electronic frequency dictionaries as additional means of the vocabulary expansion.

Materials and methods of research include the analysis of the problem of development of the English language lexical competence of students of IT directions, modeling of the process of work with frequency dictionaries in the learning process, the practical implementation of the developed model, the pedagogical experiment and analysis of its results. The vocabulary is rapidly updated in the field of IT, for these reasons, in the process of development of the lexical competence of IT students it was decided to maintain their own frequency dictionaries of actual computer vocabulary, extracted from a wide range of the English language texts in IT sphere. The article presents a structural and functional model of working with frequency dictionaries in the learning process that is a sequence of three important steps to be performed by the lecturer, and the results of each of them. Such steps are the formation of the collections of relevant texts on it, computer processing of these collections to build frequency dictionaries and automatic and manual editing of the dictionaries, intended for the formation of the ordered list of lexical units for students to learn.

The result of the research is the practical implementation of the presented model of work with frequency dictionaries. The most labor-intensive and responsible job is the preparation of the collection of English texts, based on the well-established interdisciplinary interaction. Building a frequency dictionary from the collection is performed by standard means of Microsoft Office. The editing of this dictionary means automatic and manual removal of lexical units that are of no worth for students in terms of their vocabulary expansion. The article also presents the results of a successful pedagogical experiment on the development of students’ lexical competence in the process of their preparation for the World Programming Championship. During the training, the participants with the help of such frequency dictionary quickly improved their knowledge of the vocabulary necessary to understand the conditions of the programming assignments in English.

At present, the model of work with frequency dictionaries presented in the article has proved its usefulness and positive impact on the development of lexical competence. The frequency dictionaries obtained in the course of study are regularly updated and actively used in the learning process as a good supporting tool without replacing well-tested learning technologies proven to be effective, but supplementing this process.

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