Doctor of Philology
Head of the Department of Georgian Philology
The University of Georgia
Tbilisi, Georgia
n.shavtvaladze@ug.edu.ge

Teaching the Verb Conjugation System in Accordance with the Common European Framework (Series I)

When teaching Georgian as a foreign language, learners encounter not only morphological, syntactic, lexical, and stylistic aspects, but also significant elements of national consciousness that shape the character, habits, and traditions of the people. This creates a particular challenge: it is difficult to perceive what is deeply ingrained in a nation’s identity.

While a purely linguistic approach is valid, the contemporary global context makes it essential to emphasize the relationship between language and culture. For foreign students — European, American, or Asian — one of the greatest challenges is grasping the structure of the Georgian verb and the regularities of its conjugation system. Therefore, the development of effective methodological approaches to understanding verb conjugation is crucial.

Although existing textbooks partially reflect the functional field of the verb, our long-term experience demonstrates that this is not sufficient. A systematic breakdown of verb series and classes is needed, tailored to different levels of proficiency — from the simplest to the most advanced. This article focuses on the difficulties in teaching the present tense forms of the first series and presents the tested methods used to address these challenges. Special emphasis is placed on the usage domains of both the v-nian and m-nian systems, as well as on functional suffixes of derivation that accurately reflect the form and semantics of specific verb classes.

 

Keywords: verb, conjugation, teaching, series, classes, levels, language framework.