ISSN 0798 1015
ISSN 0798 1015
Vol. 38 (Nº 40) Año 2017. Pág. 3
Oryngul Asylbekovna ABILOVA 1; Nurzhaugan Sarsenovna ZHUMASHEVA 2; Gulnazit Ermekovna ICHSHANOVA 3; Elmira Zhumabekovna ISPANOVA 4; Gulsara Salamatovna AUYELBAYEVA 5
Received: 12/07/2017 • Approved: 30/07/2017
ABSTRACT: The focus of the paper is the formation of interest in reading among junior schoolchildren at the classes of literary reading. The paper reveals the main factors and reasons for the absence of children's interest in reading in primary school. The research is based on the analysis of teaching literature, which identifies effective teaching tools used at the literary reading classes to form readers' interest among primary schoolchildren. The rise of interest in reading among junior schoolchildren is based on the results of a series of experiments. The author provides a set of effective creative literary reading activities and literary games. Much attention is given to the need to develop interest in reading among primary schoolchildren through a variety of methods, techniques, forms and activities including extracurricular activities, meeting age specifics of junior schoolchildren. |
RESUMEN: El enfoque de este artículo se basa sobre el interés en la lectura entre los escolares jóvenes en las clases de lectura literaria. El documento revela los principales factores y razones de la ausencia de interés de los niños en la lectura en la escuela primaria. La investigación se basa en el análisis de la literatura docente, que identifica las herramientas de enseñanza efectivas utilizadas en las clases de lectura literaria para formar el interés de los lectores entre los escolares primarios. El auge del interés por la lectura entre los escolares jóvenes se basa en los resultados de una serie de experimentos. El autor ofrece un conjunto de actividades literarias de lectura y juegos literarios creativos eficaces. Se presta mucha atención a la necesidad de desarrollar el interés por la lectura entre los escolares primarios a través de una variedad de métodos, técnicas, formas y actividades, incluyendo actividades extracurriculares, que satisfacen los detalles de edad de los estudiantes de primaria. Palabras clave: interés en la lectura entre alumnos menores, clase de lectura literaria, actividad literaria creativa, juegos literarios, proyecto de investigación, actividades extracurriculares |
The generation of the 21st century is doomed to live in the world stuffed with information, the world which is constantly exposed to dynamic changes. Therefore, in addition to necessary knowledge, modern children need to have a sufficient level of mature life competences in order not only to adapt to this world, but also to fully realize their potential in it. This process requires not only a deep professional and general knowledge, but also a wide outlook, highly developed intelligence and communicative skills.
There are a number of tasks, set to modern teachers, i.e. to help a child get the necessary level of knowledge and to form personal qualities that will help him/her become an active and competitive member of society; to assist a child in being a happy man and identification a unique path in life, and above that, success on this path, which is not easy. Literary reading is a perfect way to achieve all these goals.
The emphasis on literary reading is a strategically important element of culture, a tool to raise the intellectual potential of people, the creative development of their individual and social activity in society as a whole. It would seem natural that society's need for highly educated people is possible to be achieved through the growth of reading culture and raising reading level culture. However, modern global world is struck with a reading crisis.
Evidently, in conditions of present-day screen culture, a modern man is simply inseparable from television and computers. Nowadays people perceive screen as a leisure, recreation, the opportunity to relieve stress. Subconsciously, nowadays, reading is associated with efforts, the strain of will and emotions – all these duties require much work. Modern students consider reading a non-prestigious occupation, tedious and superfluous. Naturally, they prefer visual ways of obtaining information from the screen.
Compared with the screen usage goals, sociological studies show that among the motives for reading firstly comes a pragmatic reason of search for professional information and solving specific problems. Secondly, reading is an entertainment, a desire to relax, to relieve stress, to step back from the problems of life. However, recently, reading has acquired a status of an accompanying activity: people often read in public transport, while travelling or even dining or relaxing (Davis 2007).
From the point of view of psychology, reading is a deeply personal process, based on individual perceptions. The same book can cause different dissimilar thoughts and feelings among readers. Facts and literary works often receive different appraisals. Reading always results in a need to discuss what students have read, comprehend new information to share one’s thoughts with others. That is why the discussion of reading is one of the most powerful incentives for the development of the person. Reading is an effective means of self-affirmation as a person. (Kikas, Silinskas, Jõgi and Soodla, 2016) Therefore, it is important to stress that a book offers a communicative approach as a social means of communication. Thus, the study set out that reading should be treated as a perfect educator.
According to the opinion of educators, readers’ interest is a form of manifestation of cognitive needs, which directs a person to awareness of purposes of reading (as a kind of verbal indicator activity). This process, in turn, contributes to the understanding of new artistic or scientific books, encourages the conscious interactions with books (Lutova 2006). In the view of this, the interest in reading is an important factor in the formation of spiritually rich personality.
It should be noted that most of the researchers interpret the general notion of “interest” as a basic condition of human development, a complex of mental processes (emotional and intellectual), which drives him/her to conscious activities. Consequently, the interest in reading, on the one hand, is a complex mental formation, characterized by situational or sustained motivation, attention, orientation, emotional and cognitive activity, and, on the other hand, reading is a form of manifestation of pleasure, received after reading (Pehlivan, Serin and Serin, 2010).
It is quite logical that among the indicators of readers’ interests of schoolchildren one can single out the presence of internal motives that motivate a student to read books, i.e. needs and abilities to read books according to one's own preferences, curious and interested attitude to book production, knowledge of catchphrases, wide readership.
The current study found that, for teachers this issue is especially relevant, since teacher use the reader’s interest as a means of activating the knowledge of students. Eventually, reading is considered by them as one of the types of speech activities, special attention is paid to extracurricular reading, as well as lessons on the development of coherent speech.
The methodological literature contains the main provisions on the reader's interest of the child. They are as follows:
- the reader’s interests of students are manifested, first of all, in their positive attitude towards reading, in their desire to get acquainted with the content of the work as a source of new knowledge and experiences. The reader's interest manifests cognitive and emotional qualities, as well as endurance and stamina (Klimova 2013);
- the reader's interests may be episodic or sustained, therefore, in order to maintain the reader's interest, it is necessary to constantly create conditions under which a child cannot but read (Svetlovskaia 2003.);
- the age-based approach to the formation of reader's interest implies not only the consideration of features that manifest themselves at a particular stage in the development of a child, but also promising prospects for the future (Tumova 2014);
- children of all age groups exhibit the craving for reading which generally manifests itself actively, if it is not artificially suppressed; except program reading, the motive for reading is reading as a process itself (Nikolaeva and Kucherova, 2012);
- the evolutionary way of gradual formation of reader’s interest depends on the child's age group; different determinants of reading are characteristic for children of different ages. At the age of 5-9 emotional-aesthetic perception of what is read is formed, at the age of 9-10 this perception is figuratively detailed, at the age of 10-11 it is naively realistic, at the age of 12-14 it is critical-analytical, and at the same time the socio-psychological characteristics of children-readers are more significant than individual typological ones, in particular, up to 14 years of age (Mironova 2011);
- social and pedagogical conditions (teachers, family, peers, the availability of family libraries, the level of family income, the type of settlement, the number of bookstores, etc.) have a direct impact on the formation of the reader's interests of children and adolescents. (Isaeva 2011)
The most interesting finding is that one of the ways of forming the reader's interests among junior schoolchildren, corresponding to their age development, is gamification. Obviously, the appeal to the game as a means of organizing the process of forming the reader's interest is dictated not only by the age specifics of junior schoolchildren, but also by the peculiar features of the literary work that is very close to the artistic conventions of the game, and the specific perception of literature, which is also consonant with the nature of the play. Naturally, games offer experiences of a different worldview, other feelings.
The results of the study indicate that the advantage of systematic game introduction into the structure of a literary reading lesson is a reliable assistant to the teacher in reading interests' formation. Games can be conducted in any class. Literary games are very diverse, contribute to the enrichment of schoolchildren's knowledge, the development of creative imagination, imaginative memory and thinking (Popova 2014).
The section below describes our experiment. The target of the experiment was the formation of the reader's interest among junior schoolchildren. For this purpose, we used the examples of Russian classical literature, namely the stories “Kashtanka” by A.P. Chekhov and “Gift” by K.G. Paustovsky. The experiment was organized in the 3-A form (experimental group, n = 25) at the lessons of literary reading. The same age-level 3-B form became a control group (n = 27) to test the effectiveness of teachers’ influence. Creative and play methods were used in the course of the study of the stories. Furthermore, we tried to analyze the formation of the readers' interest among junior schoolchildren to the works of Russian classical literature.
Special control tools and test assignments were employed to assess the assimilation of the studied material.
Creative literary activity of students included the following types of creative assignments.
1. Creative retelling. Its main goal is that the given narrative is transmitted either with a change in circumstances, or in the form of a story, or it needs to be supplemented with new episodes. In this regard, the following types of creative retelling were used: first person retelling, retelling on behalf of one of the characters, changing the end of the text or its structure.
First person retelling requires not only grammatical transformations, but the initial reorganization of the content. In addition, when a child retells the story on his own behalf, he adds his emotions, gestures, other expressive means.
The retelling on behalf of one of the characters is an even more complicated kind of creative work. In addition to the above, the student turns into a character, on whose behalf the narrative is conducted.
Changing the end of the text is a higher level of creative activity, in which students can supplement the author's text. This type of retelling creates opportunities for students to identify their own literary abilities. This kind of retelling especially appeals to the children, because it makes it possible for children to implement their acting abilities.
2. Verbal drawing. Children were giving the answers to the question, “How do you imagine the character, certain pictures or phenomena?” Oral description of the picture that the pupil represented, and which he could draw, if he were an artist, was designed primarily for the development of the students’ imagination and fantasy. The students could transfer the characters of the story to various circumstances. At the same time, they were using their own emotional memory. In addition, the students were given the opportunity to compare the images, created by themselves, with the images created by the authors. Illustrating the text activity helped schoolchildren to understand the relationship of two types of art, i.e. painting and literature. Picking up pictures of artists, or creating their own, the students realized how to use words or paint, how to speak about the phenomenon or the subject of the surrounding reality.
3. Drama staging was applied to the texts in which there were dialogues, so that the content of the story was easy to reproduce. The transition from ordinary reading to dramatization was reading in faces, which was also performed after the analysis of the text, when the replicas of each of the characters were already polished.
4. “Interview”. The teacher was asking the students the following question, ‘in one sentence, try briefly to advertise the story in the form of an interview’. The teacher was coming to children with an improvised microphone and asking them why they recommended reading this book to others.
Consequently, literary games were also used at literary reading lessons. For example, in the game “Imagine ...” the students were working in groups of 4 or 5. After the acquaintance with a literary work each group received a card with one of the tasks, “Imagine that you are a literary critic. Write what you did not like about this story. Justify your opinion”, “Imagine yourself a grateful reader. You need to write a letter of gratitude to the author of this work”, “Imagine yourself a co-author of the work. Make the necessary changes, additions to the story”, “Imagine yourself a class teacher. Help children to get acquainted with the story, try to attract interest to it. Write what you will do for this: show illustrations, tell us about ..., read us about ..., give such tasks as ...”, etc.
The literary games “Retelling in a circle” and “Miniature” allowed the students to reproduce the text they had read. So, in the game “Retelling in a circle” the children were asked to read the text, then several students had to stand in a circle. The presenter in the center of the circle closed his eyes, rotated in place and pointed to one of the players, from whom the retelling of the text began. Then, clockwise, each student spoke one phrase from the text, and so on until the end of the text. In the game “Miniature”, after reading the text the children were divided into groups, each of which was supposed to depict the essence of the text in any miniature (sketch, pantomime), and the others had to explain what they had seen.
In the game “Portrait” it was necessary for the students to make a characterization of the actors of the stories, according to the following scheme. 1. The name of the character. 2. Appearance. 3. Acts. 4. Relationships with other characters. 5. My attitude to the characters.
The final game “Writer – not a writer” contributed to the enrichment of students’ reading experience, broadening their knowledge about children’s writers. In carrying out this game, a list of the names of children's writers was prepared in advance. This list was alternated with the surnames of well-known outstanding scientific public figures, artists, musicians. During the game, the presenter pronounced the surname of the writer – the pupils had to raise their hand; if there was another name (artist, musician) – they had to stand still and not raise the hand. Those who were mistaken, dropped out of the game. After the game, the children received an additional task: firstly, to recall works by writers whose names were on the list, and, secondly, to independently continue the list of writers.
After the completion of the formative work, control procedures were conducted to assess the assimilation of the studied material in two 3rd forms (experimental and control groups). The results of the control procedures showed the presence of significant differences (t = 3.454, with p <0.01) among the two independent sample groups.
Taking into account the results of the conducted research, it can be asserted that in the development of readers’ interests in literary reading classes one must rely on a model of personally oriented technologies aimed at the development of not only logical thinking but also imaginative thinking. However, such a two-facet approach to teaching is used infrequently in practice. Consequently, pupils do not read books (especially classics literature). Evidently, children cannot fully adequately perceive the subtext information of art fragments, which is one of the reasons for reading. Some of the schoolchildren showed cognitive inertia, indifference. They had an insufficient level of speech development, experienced difficulties in expressing their own opinion, creative use of linguistic means, depending on the type and the style of speech.
In order to manage the development of reader interests, the teacher must remember that the methodology recommends using three forms of reading for schoolchildren, i.e. educational reading, optional reading and free reading. The first form of reading can be done in classroom and at home. Students are asked to read the works included in the textual study program. The second form of reading is the independent reading of the works recommended by the teacher, which are then to be discussed in classroom conversations. The third form of reading is the type of reading the books chosen by the students themselves. By all means, all these forms of reading are interrelated, they complement one another, fostering the formation of a student-reader, acquiring a full literary education, forming readers’ culture and interest in reading, aesthetic cultivation (Kazantseva and Turaeva, 2016).
Extra-curricular work on literary reading is one of the conditions for cultivating readers’ interests. In this case, a special place in the life of students and the formation of reader’s interests should be dedicated to the library. Therefore, when an excursion to the library is firstly conducted, it should leave pleasant memories and positive impressions among young readers. Naturally, in the library schoolchildren quickly learn about the novelties of children's literature, and the teacher has the opportunity to plan extra-curricular work with the book by organizing the “Club of Asking Questions Kids” (Vvedenskaia, Epifanova, Perfileva and Torsukova, 2016).
Basically, during the library lessons the teacher cooperates with librarians. In an interesting, accessible form the librarian tells the children about the history of the book, together with the teacher the librarian conducts literary games, helps organize the holiday “Dedication to the readers” or “Friendship with the book is a holiday!” (Radaeva 2014).
Literary excursions are no less important for the development and the independence of schoolchildren in their search for novelty. Such excursions give the pupils an opportunity to visually represent the life of the writer or his characters, the events to which the work of art is devoted to. During these excursions the teacher's narrative is concretized by the acquaintance with memorial things, with documents, and other artifacts (Milovanova. and Briakova, 2016).
The topics of the excursion are discussed in conversations, during which the results are accumulated, the knowledge acquired by the students is evaluated, generalizations and conclusions are made. You can conduct reading conferences, which will promote fiction, as well as a more in-depth study of the life and the work of a writer.
Of great importance is the form of extracurricular work. We suggest a special morning reading party (Zhestkova and Tsutskova, 2014). The topic of a party is selected in advance, for example, “The Art of Favorite Fairy Tales.” Children prepare costumes of the characters of fairy tales, study fragments for recitation, prepare a dramatization of a fairy tale or a finger theater. They also select paintings, prepare drawings, applications, sculpt figurines of fairy tales. The morning classes in the junior classes can be conducted for the students of the same age group grade.
No less significant can be other ways of forming readers’ interests, one of which is a research activity at the lessons of literary reading. Literary reading as a subject is a broad field for design and research activities. The project-research helps pupils develop skills of independent creative activity, forms and develops the ability to carefully read the texts of works of art (Samykina 2015).
In this regard, we propose to consider in more detail the research project “Children's Bookshelf of My Parents”, during the implementation of which students were working according to the following plan.
1. The research topic. (A book range of my parents in their childhood).
2. The relevance of the subject. (Getting to know your parents' favorite books is one of the possible ways to activate children's reading)
3. The object of the study. (Readers’ activity of my parents in their childhood)
4. The subject of the study. (Books, read by my parents in their childhood)
5. The purpose of the project. (Promoting the readers’ interest among children).
During the project the children receive individual assignments. They are as follows.
- To find out whether reading was a favorite occupation of their parents. If parents were visiting the library, how often were they coming there?
- To conduct a survey of parents’ favorite books in their childhood. To find out why they liked the books.
- To make up a separate list of favorite books of mom and dad, compare their children's preferences, draw conclusions.
- To read the favorite children's books of their parents. To figure out the best book for myself from the favorite children's books of their parents.
- To produce for classmates an advertising leaflet “Read my parents' favorite book!”
- To introduce the literary work in the project.
The final stage of the project is the collective task. Which is as follows.
- To organize a book exhibition “The Children's Bookshelf of Our Parents”.
- To prepare a presentation of the literary work in the project, to invite the parents to the party.
The study has found that the optimal methods for carrying out research are interviews and questioning of parents, analysis and comparison of their results, evaluation and synthesis (Kovrova 2015). When implementing the project, students have the opportunity to show great interest in reading, following the example of their parents. After creating the project, children begin to understand that the computer can be used not only for games, but also for searching for various interesting information that is needed for their education.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the problem of spiritual development of the individual takes on special significance in the modern conditions of modernization of education. Fiction is a unique means of shaping a person's overall culture, moral values and aspirations. Love of the book, reading, the ability to perceive fiction, to understand its cognitive meaning and aesthetic sense, competently and reasonably prove their own considerations – such qualities have always been considered necessary components of human education.
One of the important directions in the formation of the student's personality is the development of the personality as a reader, raising the level of readership, forming readers’ interests. They are manifested in the daily need to work with the book, in the ability to pick up a book, to the extent of comprehending the artist's creative intention, cause certain aspirations, the desire to act. Fiction is an inexhaustible source of constant enrichment and spiritual development of the student’s personality.
Interest in the book begins to form from early childhood. In elementary grades, having learned to read, the student has the opportunity to get acquainted with the content of works, small books. At the same time, at the junior school age, the reading technique is still imperfect, and children do not enjoy the pleasure of reading independently. In order for schoolchildren to have a stable interest in reading, it must be maintained and enriched all the time.
The principal theoretical and practical implication of the study is that the content and methodology of the subject “Literary Reading” have a great potential for moral, spiritual and aesthetic education. The development of speech, intellect and creativity of children by means of an artistic word is very fruitful. In the process of attracting children of primary school age to reading, we need to prepare a thoughtful reader who will be emotionally involved in the learning process, capable of dialogue with the author of the artwork and active discussion of the moments which impressed him greatly in reading.
Davis, P., 2007. How cultural models about reading mediate classroom pedagogic practice. International Journal of Educational Research, 46 (1-2): 31-42.
Isaeva, E., 2011. Issledovanie opyta ispolzovaniia pedagogicheskikh sredstv formirovaniia chitatelskogo interesa mladshego shkolnika na urokakh literaturnogo chteniia [A study of using teachers’ training tools of forming the reader's interest among junior schoolchildren at literary reading lessons]. Uspekhi sovremennoi nauki i obrazovaniia, 12(1): 334-338.
Kazantseva, V. and E. Turaeva, 2016. Sushchnost i printsipy organizatsii vneurochnoi deiatelnosti v nachalnoi shkole po razvitiiu chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov [The essence and principles of the organization of extracurricular activities in the primary school to develop the reader's interests among junior schoolchildren]. Obrazovatelnaia sreda segodnia strategii razvitiia, 4 (8): 127-130.
Kikas, E., G. Silinskas, A.- I. Jõgi and P. Soodla, 2016. Effects of teacher's individualized support on children's reading skills and interest in classrooms with different teaching styles. Learning and Individual Differences, 49: 270-277.
Klimova, E., 2013. Formirovanie chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov cherez tekhnologiiu osoznannogo chteniia [Formation of the reader's interests in junior schoolchildren through the technology of informed reading]. Obuchenie i vospitanie metodika i praktika, 7: 96-98; 117-119.
Kovrova, S., 2015. Razvitie kruga chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov v protsesse semeinogo chteniia [The development of the range of readers' interests among junior schoolchildren in the process of family reading]. Materialy foruma Obrazovanie v techenie vsei zhizni nepreryvnoe obrazovanie v usloviiakh globalizatsii, Moscow, pp: 272-275.
Lutova, T., 2006. Literaturnoe chtenie v nachalnoi shkole. Privitie interesa k chteniiu u mladshikh shkolnikov [Literary reading in primary school. Encourage interest in reading in younger students]. N. Novgorod.
Milovanova, L. and O. Briakova, 2016. Formy vneurochnoi deiatelnosti po razvitiiu chitatelskogo interesa u mladshikh shkolnikov [Forms of extracurricular activities for the development of readers’ interest in junior schoolchildren]. Nauka v sovremennom informatsionnom obshchestve, Akademicheskii, pp: 70-72.
Mironova, E., 2011. Razvitie chitatelskogo interesa u mladshikh shkolnikov [Development of reader interest in junior schoolchildren]. Nachalnaia shkola, 8: 74-75.
Nikolaeva, I. and N. Kucherova, 2012. Razvitie interesa k chteniiu mladshikh shkolnikov [Development of interest in reading among junior schoolchildren]. Nauka i sovremennost, 16-1: 159-163.
Popova, I., 2014. Literaturnye igry formirovaniia chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov [Literary games for the formation of reading interests of junior schoolchildren]. Problemy filologicheskogo obrazovaniia, Saratovskii gosudarstvennyi universitet imeni N. G. Chernyshevskogo, pp: 108-111.
Pehlivan, A., O. Serin and N. Serin, 2010. Determining reading interests and habits of candidate teachers. TRNC Sample Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9: 869-873.
Radaeva, С., 2014. Vzaimodeistvie klassnogo rukovoditelia s bibliotekoi dlia razvitiia chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov [Interaction of the form-master teacher with the library for the development of readers' interest in junior schoolchildren]. Psikhologiia, sotsiologiia i pedagogika, 1 (28): 7.
Samykina, S., 2015. Chitatelskie proekty kak sredstvo formirovaniia interesa k chteniiu u mladshego shkolnika [Reader projects as a means of forming interest in reading among junior schoolchildren]. Problemy sovremennogo filologicheskogo obrazovaniia, 1: 55-59.
Svetlovskaia, N., 2003. Obuchenie chteniiu i zakony formirovaniia chitatelia [Learning to read and the rules of readers’ formation]. Nachalnaia shkola, 1: 11–18.
Tumova, Z., 2014. Formirovanie chitatelskikh interesov u mladshikh shkolnikov [The formation of readers’ interests in junior schoolchildren]. Nauka i sovremennost, 30: 87-91.
Vvedenskaia, L., E. Epifanova, I. Perfileva and I. Torsukova, 2016. Opyt organizatsii vneurochnoi deiatelnosti napravlennoi na razvitie chitatelskogo interesa mladshikh shkolnikov [The experience of organizing extracurricular activities aimed at developing the reader's interest in junior schoolchildren]. Aktualnye problemy prepodavaniia v nachalnoi shkole, 1: 87-91.
Zhestkova, E. and E. Tsutskova, 2014. Vneklassnaia rabota literaturnomu chteniiu kak sredstvo razvitiia chitatelskikh interesov mladshikh shkolnikov [Extra-curricular work in literary reading as a means of developing the reader's interests of younger schoolchildren]. Sovremennye problemy nauki i obrazovaniia, 6: 1330.
1. Atyrau State University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, 060011, Kazakhstan, Atyrau region, Atyrau, Students avenue, 212. E-mail: o_abilova@mail.ru
2. Atyrau State University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, 060011, Kazakhstan, Atyrau region, Atyrau, Students avenue, 212
3. Atyrau State University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, 060011, Kazakhstan, Atyrau region, Atyrau, Students avenue, 212
4. Atyrau State University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, 060011, Kazakhstan, Atyrau region, Atyrau, Students avenue, 212
5. Atyrau State University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, 060011, Kazakhstan, Atyrau region, Atyrau, Students avenue, 212