Fiction as a Means of Forming a Teenager as a Subject of Cognitive Activity

Abstract

The purpose of our research is to justify methodological backgrounds for the purpose of investigating subjectivity of a personality and to test empirically the level of person’s formation of teenagers.

Methods of the research. The following theoretical methods of the research were used to solve the tasks formulated in the article: a categorical method, structural and functional methods, the methods of the analysis, systematization, modeling, generalization. The questionnaire method was used as the experimental one. In order to conduct the empirical part of the research, the author’s questionnaires were developed for both parents and teachers.

The results of the research. The empirical research that lasted since 2017 to 2019 was described in the article. The task was to identify the specifics of the literary environment of pupils. This task was considered essential, and determining the level of the development of a teenager as a subject of cognitive activity was an additional task. It was noted that the substantive aspect of communication between adolescents was characterized by the imbalance of their interests in relation to different directions of literary culture. The latter one is largely represented by fantastic and detective literature. There is also a general tendency to displace literary classics out of the literary interests of adolescents.

At the stage of questioning the attempt was made to pre-imagine the degree of the development of a teenager as a subject of cognitive activity due to the influence of the literary environment, which had been determined at the level of studying the pupils’ thoughts on literature, the specifics of their literary reality which had been reflected, the means of mastering literary culture. The empirical data obtained indicated a rather weak expression in adolescents’ orientation towards another person, penetration into their inner world of the person in a situation of a real communication with other students and teachers.

Conclusions. Thus, a comparison of four types of pupils (two experimental and two control classes) within the possibilities presented by the questionnaire leads to the conclusion that the level of the development of adolescents as subjects of cognitive activity is equally low, according to different literary environment of pupils, which is determined by studying in a case of different programs. Teens, as a rule, are not able to carry out the internal dialogue with the text, to substantiate their own position, that is the subjectivity of pupils is not properly developed through either a regular curriculum or a specialized program in the course of «World Literature».

Increasing the time for quasi-communication of pupils with the literature provided by the program of its in-depth study leads to some positive results, but does not itself eliminate the problem of under-development of a teenager as a subject of cognitive activity. The subjectivity is emphasized to be formed provided by such a deliberate influence of a teacher on pupils, which will change the personal position of teens in literature. One way to achieve this position may be to overcome teens’ misunderstanding of literature as a particular form of quasi-communication, established in the course of questioning.