Strategies of concept development of foreign language students

Understanding the concepts is the basis of modern language learning. However, the studies demonstrate that many students have difficulties in understanding the concepts. Students may retain principles and facts, but a teacher often overlooks that there is no understanding of concepts and students do not know how to apply the knowledge. The problem is that facts and concepts often get lumped into the same category, making foreign language students unable to distinguish the differences between them. This results in students’ incomplete understanding of a subject. Indeed, facts and concepts require different approaches and different learning strategies. The strategies discussed in this paper will enable teachers to recognize misconceptions among their students and will allow the latter to decrease the rote learning of concepts.