Activation of the students’ creative potential who are majoring in Philology in classes on the Modern Ukrainian language

Abstract

Creativity occupies one of the central places in the model of modern higher education institution graduate’s key competencies. The article aims to reveal the content of the problem related to the development of the students’ creative thinking who major in Philology; in particular, the paper deals with a number of tasks, it is going to: 1) characterise creativity as a professional competency; 2) highlight students' views on providing a creative atmosphere in the educational process at the Department of Foreign Languages; 3) offer a number of techniques to activate the creative potential of students in modern Ukrainian language classes. The methods like: theoretical (analysis of pedagogical and psychological literature) and empirical (questionnaires and interviews with students of the Philology Faculty) were used. The Quantitative analysis of the survey’s results conducted among the second and fourth year students majoring in 014 Secondary Education (Ukrainian Language and Literature) at Ushynsky University, showed the urgency of the problem and the need to use constructive approaches to teaching academic disciplines at the Philology Faculty. The author analyses the definitions of the concepts “creativity”, “creative personality” which are primarily distinguished by such features as openness to new ideas, their flexibility and originality, interest in the problem, activity, independence in judgments. Having checked the example of the discipline “Modern Ukrainian language” (the Section “Syntax of a complex sentence), some methods of stimulating students’ creative activity were illustrated: compiling intelligence maps to visualise theoretical material and analysis which present practical tasks; creative or figurative writing based on the use of non-traditional genres (poetic techniques “11 words”, senkan; “five sentences”; fairy tales, essays, sketches, miniatures, associative writing); solving creative problems that require the involvement of different ways of learning (nature, art, linguistic and cultural studies). As a result, the emphasis was put on the importance of providing cognitive motivation and creating appropriate conditions that would encourage students to creative activity and self-expression.