THE WORK WITH A TEXT HEADING WHEN TEACHING READING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

The paper studies the feasibility of efficient work with a text heading in the process of teaching reading in a foreign language. A heading is regarded as an important part of the text structure which ensures considerably its coherence, unity, and continuity and therefore affects immediately its proper comprehension and correct understanding. The necessity to develop intentionally the students’ ability for the holistic comprehension of a text in a foreign language and the functionality of a heading itself, which determines considerably the understanding of a text as a complete and integrated one, emphasizes the significance of complex and consistent work with a text heading while teaching reading. The author offers certain forms of work with a text heading before, during and after reading. Before reading a text, the students should develop an adequate hypothesis, form some suppositions about the whole text content with due consideration of its heading and analyze its semantic structure through identifying keywords (as message elements). The work with a text heading during reading should be based on the identification and analysis of the elements of a lexical topical net which allows retracing text thematic progression, the development of its main idea, expressed in the text heading in some ways. After reading the text, the original hypothesis should be evaluated; the mistakes and their causes should be identified, the text topic-comment structure and the heading as an element of this structure should be analyzed.