Educational potential of the topic "Media" for developing students’ lexical competence: the case of British course books

Abstract

This paper examines lexical and thematic characteristics of the topic "Media" as presented in integrated English language courses by leading British publishing houses. The authors give reasons for the necessity to determine the scope of contents pertaining to this topic, its structure, intrinsic problems and its didactic specifics for lexical competence development of students of non-language related fields. The empiric material of the paper is comprised of intermediate to advanced level course books. Based on their analysis, the authors have prepared the general thematic classification of the discovered aspects of this conceptual domain and have described the distribution of thematic elements within each major aspect indicating the language proficiency level. The thematic elements are exemplified by lexical units and tasks aimed at speaking practice. The authors conclude that the content component of the "Media" topic in the analysed courses is not just topical, but also possesses remarkable potential for developing students’ communicative competence, creative and cognitive abilities.