Text Skills Assessment In Russian Language’s Monitoring In Primary School

Abstract

The idea that the reading literacy is an integrative component of functional literacy and that all subjects must contribute to its development is firmly established in the Russian primary education. The Russian language subject has a strong potential in this matter as during the Russian language lessons working with texts is one of the priority activities. However, it is impossible to effectively trace the individual educational trajectory of each student and give pedagogical support without possessing data on the reading abilities level gathered during regularly performed monitoring. The absence of credible data seriously restrains the enhancement of teaching methods. This article contains the results of a study which goal was to develop models of tasks that assess text skills and are to be included in the Russian language tests for students from the 1st to 4th grade with the obligatory respect for the principle of results comparability. The article provides the principles of formation of tasks, the tasks themselves. The results of the study show that about 30% of primary school graduates have trouble with deep comprehension of texts leading to the fact that the students have difficulties inventing text title, identifying text microtopics, identifying the topic and the main idea of the text and describing them in their own coherent statement. The gained data can serve as a basis for taking decisions on necessary alterations of methods of working with texts during Russian language lessons and the presented tasks - as models for the realization of similar studies.