TRANSFORMATIONS OF SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS AS A KIND OF MODERN MEDIA IN THE ASPECTS OF KEY READING SKILLS FORMATION

Abstract

The article suggests that the growth of the accumulation pace and dissemination of scientific knowledge, the acceleration of the information exchange processes, the expansion of the limits of its availability and volumes, imply new requirements for readership as a basic element of learning and the transformation of the textbook as main means of school study process. The authors consider science-based provisions on the expected learning outcomes in terms of representing in textbooks the ability to develop key reading skills that are fundamental to a number of key competencies of the person necessary for successful academic and continuing professional activities (communicative competence, media literacy, information competence, cognitive competence, etc.). The authors conducted investigation in which 283 students of 5 and 9 forms participated in the study, in order to find out the state of formation of readers' skills, which are formed mainly in the process of studying theoretical information and system of tasks of school textbooks during the school study process. The general results of the investigation are as follows. The difficulties in comparing, analyzing and interpreting information presented in the form of multiple text by various ways of its fixation, as well as the definition of thematic sentences bearing semantic load are revealed. It was easier for students to find information for conclusions, if it did not require additional operations, in particular the synthesis of messages from a certain set of polycodal texts. Also, difficulties were found in the process of analyzing circuits, diagrams, and graphs that did not repeat the information in the verbal text, but were only thematically associated with it and had an independent character. Students' ability to search in the text the information is formed better than the ability to analyze it, make reasoned conclusions and express their attitude to the messages. Such results testify to the students' superficial understanding of texts while reading and displaying phenomena such as «information surfing», «clapping perception». In accordance with these results and in the aspect of the tasks of forming literacy among students as one of the basic elements of key competencies, authors propose possible ways of improving the textbooks in the areas of: the method of presentation of theoretical material, the selection of texts (both theoretical and task texts), the system of tasks, compositionally-graphical modeling, convergence.