POETRY IN FOREIGHN LANGUAGE EDUCATION: PLACE IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROCCESS AND PROBLEM OF POETRY SELECTION

The paper considers English poetry as a potential source of building the students’ foreign cultural awareness. To improve the efficiency of the educational process, the author suggests using a special technology which allows revealing of educational (cognitive, developmental and teaching) potential of the foreign-language poetry. Particular attention is paid to determining principles and criteria for the selection of poetry. The most important is the principle of educational value, when poetry is regarded as a fact of foreign culture and is studied in four aspects: cognitive, developmental, teaching and educational. This approach is based on the provisions of the concept of communicative foreign language education. A few criteria are considered: the criterion of cognitive, developmental and educational potential of poetry; the criterion of the feasibility for the selected material to be studied in the given period of time; the criterion of integration of a poetic work into the entire educational process.