ANALYSIS OF EASILY CONFUSED WORDS AS TYPICAL LEXICAL ERRORS IN CHINESE LANGUAGE LEARNING AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ADDRESSING THEM

Abstract

Vocabulary instruction is an essential component of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. It should be noted that the degree to which learners master vocabulary directly affects their communicative competence. However, one of the main difficulties in learning Chinese lies in the large number of homonyms, synonyms, and near-synonyms, as well as the overall richness and complexity of the language’s lexical system. These factors create significant challenges for foreign students. As their vocabulary expands, learners increasingly encounter words that are easily confused. At the same time, in contemporary methodology for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, there is a noticeable lack of research addressing the problem of easily confusable words for speakers of Russian or Kazakh.In this study, the authors aim to examine this issue using the example of students at Kazakhstani universities who have been studying Chinese for 2–3 years or more. For this purpose, a questionnaire was conducted to identify the types of lexical errors in students’ speech related to difficulties in pronunciation, similar orthography, semantic similarity, and other factors.Based on contrastive analysis theory and an analysis of learner errors, the researchers developed a classification of specific error types. It is expected that the results of this study will contribute to improving the process of learning Chinese as a foreign language for Kazakhstani students.