Methodological Features of Studying Students’ Language Consciousness and Mental Lexicon

Abstract

The paper discusses methodological issues of student language consciousness research. The analysis of publications dealing with the language consciousness of a student leads us to the formulation of the main methodological principles. These are: the choice of linguistic signs (stimuli) relevant for the main respondents’ activity and adequate to it and a relevant method of processing collected empirical data (in order) to reflect (or to detect) features of one’s main regular activities, representing their individual personal evaluative assessments of the activity under study and to minimize the part of misleading odd casual reactions from respondents. The general conclusion of the study is as follows: in the students’ language consciousness images of the academic setting, its objects and phenomena are always refracted by their personal perceptions of these phenomena.