LINGUOCOGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS of teaching negation in English: lexical aspect

Abstract

The necessity for search of new possibilities for optimization of foreign languages teaching is grounded in a number of peculiarities of the educational process, its communicative alignment and cultural base. The integration of cognitive linguistics into the structure of English lessons meets the requirements of both teaching language in its connection with the culture of the country and communicative nature of such an education. The linguocognitive approach to teaching allows a successful implementation of the principles and methods of cognitive science for improving the efficiency of foreign lexis teaching, which was proven by a number of experimental studies. One of the main aspects of teaching lexis - teaching of lexical and phraseological units bearing negative meaning is being studied. There was evidence given for importance of negation in the structure of communicative acts, which allows to convey the meanings of absence, discrepancy, negative evaluation and communicative reaction, whereas the knowledge of the broad spectrum of the ways for representing negation in language is crucial for a successful communicative-oriented education as a fundamental principle for structuring of modern foreign language teaching. Negation is also considered as a culture-conditioned category, which is significant in linguoculture education. A number of evidences is provided to corroborate accordance of negation teaching with a number of criteria for comprehensive and balanced education.