Methodical typology of emotionally valuable foreign-language texts

Abstract

Currently, very few people deny that modern foreign language education along with cognitive development must focus on familiarizing students to important social values, development of their emotional-volitional sphere, the production of affective stereotyping which is the basis of human behaviour. The solution to this problem requires changes and additions to the content of foreign language education which should be aimed at forming a student's integrated personality in the totality of their intellectual, volitional and emotional-valuable spheres. The required content of foreign language education should be free from manifestations of negative rationalistic and technocratic tendencies in favour of personal-activity and emotionally valuable bases. However, still unilateralism is viewed in the design and implementation of the content of foreign language education. This is evident in the fact that among its components the experience of emotionally valuable relations is not fixed. The purpose of this article is to present a typology of emotionally valuable foreign-language texts as means to meet broad cognitive, aesthetic, moral and professional needs of students. Such texts must possess the qualities of text emotivism and axiological (valuable) orientation. Working with them "establishes" a connection between intelligent components of the content of foreign language education and its emotionally valuable component (EVC). The latter is based on social experience, associated with emotionally valuable sphere of a personality and considered to be a system of valuable, emotional subcomponents, a volitional one and their constituents, as well as personal universal educational action (UEA). Mastering the experience of emotionally valuable attitude to the world is expressed not in subject knowledge and skills, but in the form of personal philosophical dispositions, value orientations, gained life experience which has become an integral essence of one' self-concept. So, the object of our research in this article is a foreign-language text. Research objectives are: to consider a text as a unit of the implementation of the EVC of foreign-language education content; identify principles and criteria for the selection and organization of foreign-language texts of emotionally valuable content; give the definition and characteristics of a foreign-language text of emotionally valuable content; present a typology of foreign-language texts of emotionally valuable content; discuss techniques for working with foreign-language texts of emotionally valuable content. To create a methodical typology of foreign-language texts of emotionally valuable content a typological approach was used which assumes the partition of systems of objects and their grouping with the help of a generalized type, and a comparative study of the features, function, levels of the organization of the allocated types. During the study, methods of theoretical analysis: systemic-structural, organizational, functional, comparative, typological, modelling, designing were resorted to. A text is characterized as a unit of language and speech that expresses a complete statement. The study of emotional and valuable significance of the content of speech material is not possible without considering such a category as text emotivism. It is one of the basic properties of a text that corresponds to emotiogenic knowledge, materialized in it, and is actualized with the help of emotively charged textual components, embodying the author's emotional intentions, and the likely emotions of the addressee, associated with the perception and interpretation of textual reality. An emotive text allows you to tie together the information from a text, and emotions, caused as a result of processing of this information by the addressee and the addresser. We regard a foreign-language text of emotionally valuable content as an utterance of various degrees of authenticity which meets the general didactic principles of compliance of the content of education (CE) in all its elements and at all levels of design to the requirements for the development of the society, science, culture and a personality; the unity of substantive and procedural aspects of teaching in the selection of the CE; educational, developing and upbringing functions of teaching; its variability and problematic character; as well as specific principles of emotional and valuable significance of speech material, a dialogue of cultures, a cross-cultural character, communicativeness and authenticity. A foreign-language text of emotionally valuable contents provides reflection of higher humanistic values which a story of human life has developed (person, happiness, society, nature); representation of desired emotionally volitional and emotionally valuable relations of students to the world, to each other, to the reality, to what they do in the process of mastering of foreign-language culture; the description of the objective socio-cultural reality; students' acquaintance with the life of people, belonging to different social strata, races, minorities; accounting the identity and uniqueness of representatives of different communities; the vision of the world picture by a speaker of another language; understanding of the world through the prism of the culture of students' country and the perception of the uniqueness of their own cultural values in the context of global processes; consideration of the level of students' multicultural and bilingual development, the compliance of the content of the text to students' cognitive-communicative needs and abilities, their life experience and background knowledge; the shift from narrow subject formation of skills and abilities to their integration with other disciplinary and interdisciplinary skills for a complex spiritual and intellectual development of the individual. The leading method of investigating the problem allows us to present a typology of emotionally valuable foreign-language texts for teaching different kinds of foreign-language speech activities. The proposed typology of emotionally valuable texts for teaching different kinds of foreign-language speech activities involves the accentuation of emotionally-valuable and volitional components of students' perception of a different linguistic culture and the experience of communication with it. These components represent the displacement of the targets from the results of students' practical mastering of different types of foreign-language speech activities to an individual learner as the subject of speech, knowledge, cultures, intercultural communication and ethics, i.e. the implementation of the EVC of the content of foreign-language education. The typology of emotionally valuable foreign-language texts is an important component of the realization of the basic model of the EVC of the content of foreign-language education and is used to create its various modifications, able to function in any point of teaching a FL in the secondary school. It consists of types, sub-types, forms, sub-forms, varieties, variants and sub-variants of speech material within which the EVC of the content of foreign language education acquires the ability to perform its functions effectively provided that speech material, intended to teach various kinds of foreign-language speech activity, is sufficiently emotionally-valuable. The multilevel structure and organization of this typology creates the preconditions for the functioning of the EVC of the content of foreign language education in terms of teaching speaking, listening, reading and written speech at different stages in a secondary school. In its turn, the creation of a methodical typology requires the development of techniques for working with such texts while teaching students of different age groups. At the top level of the designed typology there are three types of foreign-language texts, located in the order of descending the degree of their emotional value: these are texts of a high (type I), sufficient (type II) and insufficient (type III) degree of emotional value. In order to give a functional character to a greater number of typology components, sub-types were selected inside types I and II of emotionally-valuable speech material. Realizing that a secondary school foreign-language text cannot be wholly original, it often undergoes some methodical processing for learning purposes. So, we assume some degree of didactic organization of an original text. However, didactic organization and methodical processing should not compromise much the validity and authenticity of speech material. Thus, its sociocultural background and indicators of emotional value cannot be lost. That's why in the transition from the first to the second level of the designed typology we exclude from it type III texts, characterized by an inadequate level of emotional value. If such texts are available in the educational-methodical complex, their methodical processing is required to ensure a sufficient level of emotional value of speech material. This will create all necessary and adequate preconditions for the implementation of the EVC of the content of foreign language education. The sub-types of texts constitute the second level of the designed system and vary in degree of authenticity. Texts of sub-type I are didactical. These are texts, specifically prepared for methodical purposes. Texts of sub-type II are semi-authentic. These are authentic texts, adapted, usually by reduction, to implement the objectives of education. Texts of sub-type III are quasi-authentic. They allow some reduction at the expense of proper names if they are numerous; and historical footnotes, i.e. particularly difficult places are removed from the text. Texts of sub-type IV are authentic. These are actually original texts, written by native speakers for native speakers. At the next level, texts are classified according to the kinds of foreign-languag