Effective Classroom Management as a Way to Teach Pupils to Understand Novels

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to establish the degree of understanding of novels by pupils on the basis of patterns of interrelation of perceptual, contextual, integrative images, which were formed at different stages of understanding by them the content of the novels in the learning situations of secondary school teaching in the conditions of different literary environment of schoolchildren.

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. As the experimental method we used the questionnaire method (we proposed authors’ questionnaires, which had the aim to study the qualitative characteristics of the literary environment of senior pupils).

The results of the research. At the stage of proposing the questionnaire, we tried to pre-diagnose the degree of pupils’ understanding of novels due to the influence of the literary environment, which was determined by the level of studying pupils’ opinions about literature. For this purpose we used questions that required the choice of one of the proposed answers, as well as open-ended questions. It should be noted that the most students have great difficulties answering open-ended questions. This was reflected in the appeals of senior pupils to the experimenter: «I do not know», «We were not told...». Such difficulties indicate a focus on factual knowledge rather than stimulating pupils’ thinking, which generally reflects the predominant focus of schooling. This is also confirmed by the fact that the experimenter’s instruction («In a case of difficulties, answering a difficult question not to answer it immediately, but to think and answer it later») wasn’t followed in the second part of each question.

Conclusions. It was proved that while reading a novel a person firstly made assumptions about the content and the meaning of information, then there would be a dismemberment of the text, highlighting its basic, some general elements. Finally, through mental activity, the reader integrates these elements into a single structural whole. Thus, the recipient finds the meaning of the information of this novel. Therefore, understanding should be considered as a result of the mental activity of the subject, as a result of which a person actively uses the available factual knowledge and thus stimulates the activity of thought in the desired direction.

We think that understanding a novel can take place without the active mental activity of the reader. In this case we are talking about the so-called understanding-recollection, in cases where a person has already read this novel before. If you need to understand a new, unfamiliar one to yourself, understanding goes through a number of stages and always involves the implementation of active mental activity of the subject.

We characterize the process of understanding a novel as a certain transindividual discourse. In this case we have to note the concept of three main registers of the psyche of the Individual – Real, Imaginary and Symbolic ones – they are quite informative. These concepts are based on the fact that the development of human (conscious) forms of reflection of the reality is completely determined by the spheres of the society and the culture.