EVALUATION OF STUDENTS’ READING SKILLS: ANALYSIS OF THE ACTUAL WORLD EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The proposed article is the first part of the analytical study “Formation and evaluation of students’ reading skills: analysis of the actual world experience”. The results of the research are summarizing the main scientifically grounded provisions, which are the basis of modern approaches to the formation and evaluation of reading skills as key general educational skills. Given the multidimensionality of the problem under study and the author’s desire to complete the coverage of the research results, the paper consists of two parts. In the first part of the research according to the results of the study of the readership skills development of the Ukrainian students, some aspects of foreign experience in forming literacy of reading of students are considered. Author submits comparative characteristics of readers’ skills assessment by describing of corresponding blocks of tasks in tests with high rates in Ukraine and the USA; the necessity of training students in analytical reading of information texts as well as development and improvement of tools for complex assessment of readers’ skills is grounded. According to the readers’ skills, which are critically necessary for both school education and for further professional development of a personality, the essence of the leading methods for evaluation of their formation is revealed (such methods are ART, CKC, TRT, CCT, Cloze-test, GISA, etc.). The analysis of modern researches made it possible to conclude on the tendency to create a comprehensive, scenario-based methodology for assessing the levels of formation of a totality of practically oriented readership skills (which is the basis of reader literacy) taking into account the individual characteristics of readership of respondents (according to the reader’s experience) and the peculiarities of the environment of its proceedings (dynamic communication environment, reading of digital or printed texts). The purpose of such method should be to evaluate not only the content understanding of different types of texts, but also the ability to purposefully operate them to solve practical problems in the tests simulated realistic communicative situation (scenario), aimed at achieving the goal (the creation of a certain creative product on the basis of reading polycodox texts). The findings found during the study of the disadvantages of forming and assessing the reading literacy of Ukrainian students lead to the importance of studying positive foreign experience, which is intensifying in the context of reforming the Ukrainian educational system (development of normative documents, educational and methodological materials).