2. My latest trip was to Viena a few month ago. As I don't speak German, I had to use English in most of the cases, but there were people who did not speak English so... we had to find a different way to communicate. Except for signs and body language I tried to learn some words related to contexts I found myself in: shopping/hotel & restaurant related/greetings. Well, the first reason for learning those words was the need to communicate and make myself understood... there are some words I still remeber and some others which were forgotten, but hopefully ready to be reactivated.
4. There are a lot of relevant examples of false friends found by Romanians who are studying English. I can refer to contexts in which my students easily confuse 'eventually' (finally) with the Romanian equivalent 'probably', 'to accomodate' (to provide shelter) with ' to adapt' or 'nervous' (tense, excited) with 'angry'.
5. I do not fully agree to any of the statements; I do not think that it is entirely a teacher's job to decide what words students need to learn as I do not consider that students should decide for themselves which words they would like to learn. The best way is somewhere in the middle: based on class interests and abilities, as well as the various contexts and purposes for learning the items of vocabulary, the teacher should choose the most appropriate items to be taught to students and, of course, to make it easier for them to learn and correctly use the respective words.