Free associative experiment as an effective tool for researching a “living” word (from work experience)

INTRODUCTION . The study is devoted to the description of a as one of the effective modern methods of word research, its identification, perception in the linguistic consciousness of a native speaker and reflection of the corresponding ideas about it. The purpose of the study is to show in practice what free associative experiment capabilities are available in the study of “live” speech and results‟ interpretation (using the example of participation in the experiment by undergraduates of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University). The free associative experiment is conducted within the framework of the major discipline in the educational program “7M02314 – Russian Philology” – “Research Technologies of Discourse” (Master‟s Degree, 2nd year). MATERIALS AND METHODS . The research material is theoretical and practical research of scientists devoted to the characteristics of the associative experiment, its types and features in various aspects (psycholinguistic, linguodidactic, linguocultural, comparative cultural, etc.); the educational research results in the free associative experiment format based on associations to hyperonyms, toponyms: city , capital , village , Almaty , Astana . The following methods are used in this study: an empirical method with methods of observing linguistic phenomena, a descriptive method that includes methods of analyzing linguistic material, interpreting and generalizing it; a method of lexico-semantic analysis that allows to identify the lexical and seminal specifics of linguistic/textual units; a method of statistical analysis that allows to verify experimental research data; a method of scientific abstraction and modeling , etc . RESULTS AND DISCUSSION . Free associative experiment is chosen as an effective research tool that reveals certain structural relationships between vocabulary units of an individual native speaker and provides an opportunity to trace the motivation of emerging associative connections in accordance with the peculiarities of culture, history, and world perception of a native speaker. To achieve the goal and research objectives, a questionnaire is developed and a survey is conducted in the Google-form format. The “multidimensional” interpretation of the experimental results is given in the form of associative-semantic fields made up of wordsassociations to the proposed stimulus words. Models have been compiled for clarity and abstraction of the results obtained. CONCLUSION . The identified subjective associations of respondents in the stimulus words under consideration show the uniqueness of the worldview and world perception of each individual native speaker, the study of the characteristics of which presents the prospects for research in this direction.