Dr. Elena Tsvetkova
Sofia University
https://doi.org/10.53656/str2022-3-3-tea
Absract. The article is related to the teaching of key concepts in civic communication. The aim is to propose an alternative approach for defining terms such as citizen, rights, person etc., which links the previous experience of the students
with these words and their lexical definition. This approach is inspired by the ideas
for applying the prototype theory and the study of metaphors in foreign language
teaching. The hypothesis is that such methods can be successfully applied in the teaching of civic education, so that the training is related to practice. The article includes examples from civic education textbooks for 11th grade, which provide definitions inspired by these approaches. In addition, a comparison has been made between the linguistic intuitions of the students (shared in the generalized results of a survey) and the proposed definitions in the textbooks.
Keywords: civic education; prototype theory; salient meaning; linguistic intuitions