Читання художніх творів як засіб формування умінь критичного мислення студентів-філологів ЗВО

Abstract

Background: Radical changes of the present day life challenge the higher educational community to help the student develop into a personality ready to actively and creatively perceive information, to optimally apply the necessary type of mental activity, to analyze information, to have independent opinion and to defend it, to apply the acquired knowledge. This research investigates the efficiency of reading literary texts critically with the purpose of building critical thinking skills of students. Purpose: The article aims at defining ‘critical thinking, specifying the distinctive features of literary texts the criteria applied to select the texts to be an effective tool in building critical thinking skills and suggest a sample set of assignments to help students improve their critical thinking skills. Methodology relies on the critical analysis of the available research on the topic as well as of the authors’ experience in using literary texts to teach critical thinking. Results and discussion: Reading literary text has proved to build students’ critical thinking skills, help develop both personally and professionally. The authors of the article offer a practical set of assignments to build students’ critical thinking skills through reading literary texts. These tasks are based on the critical thinking model by Lindsay Clandfield and correspond to the traditional stages resorted to when working with the text (Before reading, While reading and After reading). Each of the defined stages focuses on utilising some of the six levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives through activities that promote these cognitive processes.In further research, it is necessary to experimentally verify the effectiveness of the critical reading of the literary texts to build critical skills with university language students.