AUTHENTIC TEXT AS A MAIN STRUCTURAL COMPONENT OF ELECTIVE COUSES TEXTBOOKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES FOR THE STUDENTS OF PROFILE SCHOOL (on the basis of the textbook “Culture and Art of Great Britain”)

Abstract

The article deals with the problems of using authentic texts in the process of mastering elective courses content on foreign languages by senior pupils. It is marked that an authentic text is a main structural component of elective courses textbooks on foreign languages for students of 10–11 classes of profile school. The determination of the term “authentic text” is given, its advantages on other types of texts are described. The row of criteria for selection of authentic texts to elective courses textbooks is distinguished by the author. Three stages of work with authentic texts are described in detail: a pre-text stage, a while-text stage, a post-text stage. The aim of every stage, its tasks and expected results, are determined. In particular, pre-reading tasks often aim to raise the students’ knowledge of what they are about to read (their schematic knowledge) as this knowledge will help them to understand the text. While-reading (or during-reading) tasks consist of summarizing, reacting, questioning, arguing, evaluating, and placing a text within one’s own experience. The reading activities of while-reading stage help to encourage critical thinking of students and increase their comprehension and easy retention. Post-reading (or after-reading) exercises first check students’ comprehension and then lead students to a deeper analysis of the text. In the real world the purpose of reading is not to memorize an author’s point of view or to summarize text content, but rather to see into another mind, or to mesh new information into what one already knows. To check the students’ comprehension and retention of the information of a text that they have already tackled, teachers should employ the last stage – the post-reading stage. At the end of this publication the examples of exercises and tasks are resulted from the elective course textbook “Culture and Art of Great Britain”, which will be used in the process of work with authentic texts.