Technologies for the development of critical thinking for the implementation of a personality-oriented model of teaching a foreign language



This article deals with the issue of developing students’ critical thinking abilities. The study of this problem is due to the importance of forming abilities to analyse and process the received information.

Keywords: upcoming information, thinker, goal setting.

Critical thinking is the ability to doubt incoming information and your beliefs. The skill helps to think clearly and rationally, look for a logical connection between facts and formulate strong arguments. The basis of critical thinking is the ability to reason. Critical thinkers ask questions, question ideas and statements, and do not accept them as truth. To become a critical thinker, you need to be an active researcher, not a passive recipient of information.

A person with undeveloped critical thinking makes a decision quickly, without hesitation, relying on feelings and intuition, skimming through information, does not reflect on arguments and does not look for evidence.

A person with developed critical thinking thinks about his reaction before making a decision, doubts incoming information and his beliefs until he finds evidence.

It is especially important to develop critical thinking for young people in order to be able to make decisions correctly in a rapidly changing huge information flow. The modern information flow is a constant feed of messages in which news, advertising, useful content, propaganda are mixed. If you believe everything that is written and said, you can be deceived to manipulate or impose someone else's opinion.

In this regard, we believe that it would be advisable to use the technology of developing critical thinking in foreign language classes, by which we mean a system of pedagogical strategies and techniques aimed at forming students' critical thinking, which implies analysis and evaluation of a huge flow of incoming information, logical construction of their own judgments, reasoned conclusions, highlighting problems and finding rational ways to solve educational, professional and everyday tasks.

The technology of critical thinking development implies the use of pedagogical strategies and techniques related to working with information and organizing work in groups («cluster system», «confused logical chains», insert, «keywords», graphic methods of organizing material, etc.), which contribute to motivating students to cognitive activity and thereby improving the quality higher education. An important condition for the application of such strategies and techniques is the complete reproduction of the three-phase technological cycle: challenge, comprehension, reflection. The challenge stage involves motivation for the learning process, updating existing knowledge, planning and goal setting. At the stage of comprehension, goals are set, new information is comprehended, answers to questions are found, difficulties are identified. In the process of reflection, one's own opinion is formed, new information is summarized and evaluated, new material is appropriated, which becomes students' own knowledge, answers to the questions posed are given.

The technology of critical thinking development implies the use of pedagogical strategies and techniques related to working with information and organizing work in groups («cluster system», «confused logical chains», insert, «keywords», graphic methods of organizing material, etc.), which contribute to motivating students to cognitive activity and thereby improving the quality higher education. An important condition for the application of such strategies and techniques is the complete reproduction of the three-phase technological cycle: challenge, comprehension, reflection.6 The challenge stage involves motivation for the learning process, updating existing knowledge, planning and goal setting. At the stage of comprehension, goals are set, new information is comprehended, answers to questions are found, difficulties are identified. In the process of reflection, one's own opinion is formed, new information is summarized and evaluated, new material is appropriated, which becomes students' own knowledge, answers to the questions posed are given.

It was established that the organization of the educational process in the formation of critical thinking in foreign language classes may include problem-based learning, the purpose of which is to motivate students to find solutions to the tasks set, express their own opinions, the desire to independently investigate the problem and come to reasonable conclusions. In the context of problem-based learning, the emphasis is on independent work in a group, so that students can express their own point of view and exchange opinions, thereby learning to work in a team and respect the views of others

The technology of developing critical thinking through reading and writing is of particular interest for foreign language lessons. It is this technology that draws attention to the text. It is based on the communicative-activity principle of teaching, which provides for a dialogical, interactive mode of classes, a joint search for solutions to problems, as well as «partnership» relations between the teacher and students. Various techniques of technology develop the ability to perceive information, predict, work with text, ask questions and creatively interpret information.

The techniques themselves can and should be used as necessary to achieve specific goals, adhering to the idea: the priority of each student's opinion, the importance of each judgment, the non-authoritarianism of the teacher, the reliance of new knowledge on existing experience. It cannot exist separately and be used on a case-by-case basis.

Each stage, having its own goals and objectives, also has a set of characteristic techniques aimed first at activating research, creative activity, and then at comprehending and generalizing the acquired knowledge.

Science knows many techniques of critical thinking formation technologies: insert (writing system for effective reading and reflection — text labeling, brain attack, Vena diagram, group discussion, reading with stops and Bloom's questions, Bloom's cube, Bloom's daisy, «thick» and «thin» questions, clusters, conceptual wheel, a retweeted lecture, an essay, catch a mistake, confused logical chains, a Z-X-Y table, a mutual question, etc.

The technology of developing critical thinking in foreign language lessons is based on the following principles:

– variability (individual, paired and group forms of work, various texts: dialogues, polylogues, letters, tables, descriptions, diagrams, maps, comics; various variants of topics and types of exercises);

– problem solving (we use language to solve problems, problems make students think, and by thinking, they learn);

– cognitive approach to grammar (not all students easily assimilate rules or structures: students are given the opportunity to work on them themselves, and then the fear of grammar disappears, they better assimilate its logical system);

– learning with passion (having fun is one of the main conditions for the effectiveness of the lesson, so we definitely include games, jokes, riddles, crosswords, puzzles, puzzles in the learning process);

– individualization (children are given many opportunities to think and talk about themselves, their lives, interests, about the life of their native land, about the work of fellow villagers);

– accessibility and feasibility (never offer a student a task that he cannot complete; the task necessarily corresponds to the level at which the student is).

References:

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