The foreign literature in the school: towards intertextual reader-student thesaurus problem statement

Abstract

Introduction. The importance of intercultural dialogue as a basis for mutual understanding between representatives of different countries was emphasized in International Commission on the Futures of Education (UNESCO) report «Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education» [15]. Foreign literature is an integral part of school literary education system in Russia and an important element in the development of intercultural dialog. The aim of the article is to actualize the educational potential of studying foreign literature at school and to raise the problem of methodological research of intertextual thesaurus of high school and college students. The aim of the article is to foreground the educational potential of studying foreign literature at school and to raise the methodological research problem of intertextual senior pupils’ and students’ thesaurus. Materials and methods. Comprehensive analysis of scientific and educational literature about the history of Russian methodology of the XIX-XXI centuries; analysis of curricula, scientific publications about studying world literature at school, including dissertation research, were analyzed. 172 students of the Institute of Defectology Education and Rehabilitation of Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University took part in the pilot survey. The aim of this survey is to identify students’ intertextual thesaurus in the field of foreign literature. The materials for the survey were questions and tasks on the knowledge of foreign writers' names and quotations from the dictionary-guide for schoolchildren. Results. The study has shown that a system of studying foreign literature has been formed in Russian school at the beginning of the XXI century. On the basis of the scientific researches analysis the trends in reading and studying foreign literature in modern school as well as directions of contemporary methodological research were identified. The pilot survey revealed students’ insufficient level of foreign literature knowledge. The same low level of students’ knowledge of literary quotations from the world classics works was also established. For instance, among the names of foreign classical writers which were known to the respondents only 35 percent named Shakespeare, 7 percent – Goethe, less than 5 percent – Dante. 48 percent of the total number of respondents recognized quotations from world classics. The necessity of building an intertextual thesaurus system development of modern reader-schooler on the basis of the principle of cultures dialog is substantiated. Conclusion. At the end of the research the further directions of work in the field of intertextual thesaurus of modern reader-schooler were defined. It can be accomplished with the practices of reading and studying foreign literature texts.