"Konventionelle Syntagmen" und "situative Idiome"– überlegungen von Aleksander Szulc zum Wortschatzlernen und zur Wortschatzarbeit im Fremdsprachenunterricht

The objective of this paper is to acquaintance the readers with works of Aleksander Szulc, an eminent Polish linguist and researcher in glottodidactics, devoted to the topic of learning and teaching vocabulary during courses of German as a foreign language. Special attention has been paid to the notions of conventional syntagm and situation idiom introduced by Szulc. The first part of the paper focuses on the former notion, which partially corresponds to the notion of collocation. We present the role of conventional syntagms in learning and teaching foreign vocabulary and the impact they have on the process of interference. We also argue for the presence of conventional syntagms in vocabulary building activities in classroom and in course books. Further we show the evolution of Szulc’s definition and understanding of the notion of conventional syntagm and how he progressed from this notion to the notion of collocation. The second part of the paper focuses on situation idioms which correspond to the modern notion of pragmatic fixed phrases. After their short presentation, we argue for their signifi cance in learning German as a foreign language and hence, for the necessity of their incorporation in teaching of German. Finally, the article is also an attempt at reintroducing Szulc’s insights into academic discourse and an appeal to recognize his contribution to the research on collocationality.