Georgian Online Exercises for the Foreign Students − the principles of construction

Abstract

Difficulties in the Georgian language learning are conditioned by the complexities of the language itself and by its otherness in comparison with the European languages. After the reading and writing skills are obtained, the complexities of the Georgian grammar remain to seem impossible to overcome multiple diversifications of the forms of the parts of speech, abundance of affixes, polypersonality of verbs – all those factors originate several problems for the foreign learners. It is already several years that the program “Irbakhi” has been working on in the Ministry of education and science of Georgia (prof. Marika Odzeli − the author and coordinator of the program), website www.geofl.ge is created and is provided by the learning and methodological material, containing manuals, working sheets, reading material, methodological papers, reference material in grammar, grammar guide books and all the materials correspond to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). Learning a foreign language only from the manuals is not easy. As time passes, the distance learning methods and exercises are being worked on throughout the world and correspondingly, the abilities to fulfill independently several grammar exercises are also growing. In response to this, on the given stage, within the “Irbakhi” program, a number of the online grammar exercises were compiled containing learning activities for the several stages such as: listening, writing, reading, lexis and grammar. There are several types of the useful exercises, whenever it is necessary for the learners, listening to some words, phrases and texts is also available which helps to fulfill the grammar exercises. The grammar exercises are based on the basic dictionary and abstracts of the literature texts, the fundamental issues of which are given in the text books, work books and reading material. The online grammar exercises represent the convenient additional learning material. When compiling them, we had to solve some problems: choosing the essential problems and systematizing them by the levels, using vocabulary as the base, creating systemic menu and using large varieties of the exercises themselves. The drop-down menu shows the Georgian grammar system through its morphology and syntax (i.e. parts of speech, grammatical categories and others). The issues related to the verbs are especially diverse, including person, number, mood, conjugation forms, preverb, special types of conjugation and so on. Some types of the grammar exercises are used: marking the correct answer out of 3 or 4 given; inserting a right answer into the right space of the table or scheme, also the type of exercise as drag and drop, choose the proper words or the endings in the given full texts. The exercises are simple in use, oriented on practical knowledge, self-checking and improving the level of knowledge.