LATERAL THINKING IN TEACHING UKRAINIAN EDITING TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

Background. Teaching editing, being an effective tool of building up students’ text competence, faces a number of challenges. To foster high school students’ mastering the skills of effective text creation and written production, Ukrainian language teachers are searching for teaching strategies to improve their students’ literacy, increase motivation and induce thinking. Lateral thinking techniques are viewed as a powerful instrument to develop students’ text competence through teaching editing. Purpose: The aim of the article is to present the strategy of teaching the Ukrainian language text editing to 10-11graders using lateral thinking techniques; to analyze how lateral thinking techniques stimulate the interest of students in editing activities and build up their text competence. Methodology. The study was conducted in November-December 2022; the participants were 10th-grade (n=25) and 11th-grade (n=24) students of specialist philology-oriented school No 98 of Kyiv. The authors of the article designed the research framework; its implementation involved interviewing five Ukrainian language and literature teachers of the above-mentioned school with 9-17 years of teaching experience to specify the problem areas; selecting texts and designing tasks for the students to practice correcting and editing the suggested texts. Results and discussion. The study confirmed the effectiveness of introducing lateral thinking techniques into the Ukrainian language teaching editing; resulted in designing sample exercises with instructions to be included in the high school curriculum for developing the skills of text production and editing. Translations as a variety of texts to edit have proven to stimulate students’ interest and creativity. Further steps are to be taken to compile a manual for teachers to implement lateral thinking techniques into the Ukrainian language teaching editing to foster high schoolers building up their text production and editing competences.