POTENTIAL OF THE APPLICATION OF TECHNOLOGY OF CRITICAL THINKING DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PUPILS IN TEACHING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

Abstract

The article covers the issue of developing critical thinking in the context of competence-oriented teaching of foreign languages in secondary school. The potential of applying the technology of critical thinking development of secondary school pupils in curricula and textbooks on foreign languages has been clarified. The content of the foreign languages curricula for grades 5–9 is uncovered through the prism of their opportunities to develop critical thinking of pupils in the process of teaching. The focus on the development of critical thinking skills has been identified in curricula in the formulation of the tasks of teaching a foreign language, disclosure of the ways of implementing the competence potential and integrated content lines of the field of study “Foreign languages”, as well as directly in the selection of the topics for communicative interaction of pupils. With the aim to analyze foreign language textbooks, the criteria were set based on the methodological principles and requirements of the technology of critical thinking development of pupils, in particular, these criteria concern the content of texts, the presence of open questions to pupils, the presence of tasks for the use of higher-order thinking processes and special tasks, based on the technology strategies, as well as the structure of sections and chapters of a textbook. The proposed criteria were applied to analyze the textbooks for the 8th and 9th grades used in the process of teaching English in schools of Ukraine. It is established that the foreign languages curricula for secondary school provide for the development of critical thinking of pupils concurrently with the formation of key competences in them. At the same time, the content and methodological apparatus of the analyzed textbooks are not sufficiently in line with the requirements of the technology of developing pupils’ critical thinking, which is emerging today as an important methodological problem.