SUBJECT-SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF A FOREIGN- LANGUAGE TEXT AS A WAY TO DEVELOP THINKING

Abstract

Development of critical thinking as a strategic aim of educational process can be achieved when techniques applied to the material in use explicate logical operations (analysis and synthesis)necessary to perform a task. The article gives a short characteristic of the method of denotata description which can be applied to professional text reading and which transforms the process of understanding into the staged and conscious elicitation of information about a subject and its relations and links.The method which is developed by A.I. Novikov and his working group aims to reveal the realia described in the text and their relationships. Realia, or denotata, are treated in this approach as the content units, and the corresponding linguistic expressions are labeled as names of the denotata. The denotata are marked in the graphic form that visualizes the content of the text in the scheme. To complete the scheme it is important to externalize the links between the realia naming them. In other words the scheme (a denotata map) reflects the main object described in the text (which is the core set of the scheme), its aspects at different levels and the relations of the aspects. As a whole the scheme presents an integral model of a certain situation of reality.The method of denotata schemes is especially effective in the process of learning a foreign language when linguistic difficulties appear to be an additional barrier for understanding the content of a professionally oriented text. The method allows the readers to differentiate the denotata and their names, the content and the language describing the content, the structure of the text and the structure of the objects described. Such an approach to the text reading constitute the base for the lexical competence development as well as the linguistic competence in general which is an essential element of critical thinking.