The art of reading can be done
an excellent professor of literature.
V. Ostrogorsky
Fiction is of interest to scientists of various specialties: not only literary scholars and linguists, but also psychologists, sociologists, historians, etc. However, before studying a literary work, it must... read.
And here everyone is professionals in the humanities, representatives of other specialties, as well as people without special higher education and so on. - are equal: at the first (not necessarily one-time) acquaintance with a literary text, any of us is a READER. Of course, depending on individual experience, you can be a skilled reader, that is, have mature reading skills, or just starting to learn difficult art reading fiction.
Determining the goal.
The task is to teach read fiction
relevant for different forms training: secondary school, training of philology students, etc. It is, to one degree or another, declared and implemented in the practice of teaching Russian literature and the Russian language as a native language, as well as in teaching the Russian language and Russian literature to foreigners.
For the methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language, a literary text is a favorite teaching material. Developed different kinds educational analysis(interpretation or exegesis) of a literary text: literary criticism, linguostylistic, linguistic, linguistic and cultural studies, etc. As a rule, they transfer learning (research) techniques to the classroom literary text from the standpoint of the relevant science. And this, in our opinion, ... “puts the cart before the horse.”
Since you can only study (research!) a previously understood text. Analysis, i.e. cognition of a text in the categories of a particular science is not a means of directly perceiving/understanding the text, but it can deepen existing understanding, fit the text into a broad scientific - literary or cultural - context, etc. Practice shows that in classes on literary text analysis, foreign language students are more likely to become familiar with ready-made options interpretations literary works, than they independently parse the text, and in an extracurricular situation, if they need to read/understand an unfamiliar literary text, they experience significant (often insurmountable) difficulties, they simply do not know where to start.
Thus, target work with texts of fiction should be formulated as follows: teaching independent understanding of texts. The set goal will determine both the principles for selecting text material and the organization of work on it, as well as the final result of educational activities.
Literary text or work of art
For further discussion, it is necessary to distinguish between two objects: a literary text and an artistic (literary) work, because failure to distinguish them leads to confusion.
Artistic text- this, according to Yu.M. Lotman, is one of the components of a work of art, far from the only one, but “an extremely essential component, without which the existence of a work of art is impossible” [Lotman 1972:24].
Let us allow ourselves a self-quote and define artistic text How:
"material embodiment works of fiction;
his verbalized(i.e. expressed in words), recorded in writing content;
cumulative - from the first letter of the first word to the last period (or other punctuation mark) at the end of the last page, - linguistic expression literary work" [Kulibina 2000: 54].
Besides literary text, a work of art also includes all its variants and sketches, the history of creation, known or alleged prototypes of heroes, events, etc., certain evidence of the author’s intention, authoritative critical analyzes and literary analysis of the themes and ideas of the work, various interpretations of the work of art (known theatrical performances, film adaptations, etc.), etc. A work of art understood in this way does not have clearly defined contours; it can be modified, supplemented, etc. Of course, the entire amount of information that makes up a work of fiction is accessible only to specialist literary critics. And even then, in any case, the question is about completeness known information in relation to an object - a work of art - can only be decided relatively.
Any reader (a specialist literary critic can also play this role) first of all deals with the text of a literary work, an artistic text. And you must form your opinion about it, formulate for yourself its personal meaning based on what the author SAID in the text. Those. we can talk about the self-sufficiency of a literary text: it contains everything that is necessary for its understanding, and there is no need for additional comments of various types, explanations, reference texts, etc.
An important methodological conclusion follows from the above: the material for learning to read fiction is a literary text. This or that amount of information related to a work of art (but not included in its literary text) can be presented to students after the text is independently understood by them. Otherwise, prematurely acquired knowledge (“ready-made understanding”) will interfere with the process of semantic perception of the text 1 .
For a writer, a text is never complete: “a writer is always inclined to refine, complete. He knows that any detail of the text is only one of the possible implementations of a potential paradigm. Everything can be changed. For the reader, the text is a cast structure, where everything is in its only possible place, everything carries meaning and nothing can be changed."([Lotman 1999:112]; our italics - N.K.).
According to Yu.M. Lotman, a literary text should be perceived, first of all, “as a message in a natural language.” This will be the basis for its further comprehension as a work of art. Based on this authoritative opinion, we consider the literary text as communicative unit, a means of communication in a given language, however, is a special means in which the language realizes not only communicative, but also aesthetic functions.
Principles for selecting literary texts
Based on the stated goal - teaching the understanding of literary texts, selection principles textual material (literary texts!) can be formulated as follows:
a literary text must be such that the potential reader, firstly, wanted and secondly, smog his understand.
1. The interest of the student (potential reader) is important because it creates an internal motive for the activity, due to which the activity itself (despite the difficulties of its implementation) becomes more attractive and effective. Any teacher can give examples of how lively and interesting a lesson can become if the personal (internal) motives of students are affected. Here it is necessary to take into account the age, gender, and often national, as well as social and other characteristics of the audience. Therefore, in principle, there cannot be lists of literary texts that are required reading: what goes well with one audience may be absolutely uninteresting for another.
However, we will allow ourselves one recommendation based on many years of experience: foreign language students, as a rule, are interested in what is now relevant for Russian readers, i.e. first of all - books modern authors. All ours educational materials- This methodological developments for lessons in RFL texts by contemporary writers [Kulibina 2001; 2004; 2008a]. Tutorial“Reading Poems of Russian Poets” (2014) also includes poems by poets of the second half of the twentieth century (B. Okudzhava, N. Rubtsov, I. Brodsky, etc.)
2. The accessibility of a text for a potential reader is usually understood as the correspondence of the reader’s level of language proficiency to the linguistic complexity readable text. In our opinion, this is true only with regard to grammar. A mandatory requirement is that the text must contain only grammar familiar to the reader.
Regarding vocabulary, this requirement is by no means unconditional, as the classic phrase of L.V. Shcherba (“Glokaya kuzdra…”) and the linguistic fairy tales of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya “Battered Pussies” convince us of. Next, we will focus on how the reader can overcome lexical difficulties when reading.
An important aspect of text accessibility is also that the reader understands situation text, or, as psycholinguists say (for example, T. van Dyck), so that in the reader’s mind it is represented model this situations, known to him based on previous life or reading experience.
Among other requirements for the text used for teaching reading fiction, it should be noted the time required to understand it, or more precisely, the time required for classroom work aimed at understanding it. The text should be such that work on it can be completed in one day’s lesson (45 minutes, 1 hour 30 minutes, etc.). Naturally, understanding the same text may require different amounts of time. different groups.
Organization of work on a literary text
Traditionally, educational work on a literary text consists of three stages: before-, during- and after text. Most methodologists agree on this, but each one determines in his own way at what stage, what and how should be done.
For us the priority is the stage textual work, because It is at this stage that the actual reading takes place, i.e. perception, understanding and experience of a literary text. If under certain conditions (for example, lack of classroom time) before- And after text stages of work can be reduced to one or two questions, or even omitted or performed as homework, That textual work must be carried out in the classroom to the fullest extent possible.
In order to present classroom work on a literary text exactly as system(and not an arbitrary set of randomly selected tasks), we will sequentially look at all stages of work: pre-, during- and after text
1. Pre-text work.
When working on a literary text, you should focus on the actions of a native speaker reader. Turning to our own reading experience, we cannot help but notice that the beginning of reading a book is usually preceded by a certain moment when we have a desire to read this particular book.
Hence, the main goal of pre-text work- make the foreign reader want to read the proposed text. One possibility is to interest the potential reader in the personality of the author.
Pre-text work can be done in class or at home. Each teacher, at his own discretion, can add something of his own, something that may be of interest to his audience.
In our opinion, at the stage of pre-text work not worth it:
- talk about the work itself, because then it’s no longer interesting to read,
- invite students to complete language tasks (“remove language difficulties”), because Almost all, for example, lexical difficulties can be overcome during the reading process (i.e. at the textual stage); in any case, it is worth trying to overcome them on your own (how to do this will be discussed further).
2. Text-based work.
The main goal of textual work- independent semantic perception (including experience, i.e. perception at the level of ideas) by the reader of a literary text. This goal can be achieved by modeling the processes that occur when reading fiction in the mind of a native reader.
Most of these processes in natural conditions occur subconsciously, in a reduced form; the reader sometimes does not realize on the basis of what data he comes to certain conclusions or why certain images appear in his imagination. However, if while reading a native speaker encounters any difficulty (linguistic, semantic, figurative), he tries to overcome it with the help of a linguistic guess, i.e. “launches” the reflexive mechanism using one or more (one after another) cognitive operations (strategies).
Reading a literary text by a foreign speaker is not least characterized by the fact that he much more often has a need to overcome various difficulties (which is quite natural) and, therefore, he needs developed language reflection skills (in conditions of reading in foreign language). The situation is made easier by the fact that the mechanisms of linguistic guesswork (linguistic reflection) are universal, and we're talking about not about the formation of new skills, but about creating conditions for the positive transfer of existing ones (formed by reading in their native language).
2.1.
If a literary text offered for reading has a title, it is necessary to pay attention to it: invite students to build a reading forecast, think about what a text with that title might be about.
Reading is controlled by so-called anticipation, i.e. We, wittingly or unwittingly, but inevitably predict the development of events in the text; this is a pattern of mature reading. As a rule, it is impossible to fully reveal the meaning of its title before reading the text. You don’t need to do this in a lesson either; you should limit yourself to what the name itself allows you to do, i.e. its meaning, not its meaning.
A short text (for example, a short poem) can be presented to students directly in the classroom. It is advisable to invite students to read the story at home either without a dictionary, or, on the contrary, to try to cope with difficulties in the traditional way (check it in a dictionary) and see what comes of it. In any case, the text should be heard in the audience.
It is not necessary to read the entire text at once; you can present the text to students in fragments. In this case, after reading the fragment, there is a discussion of it, guided by questions from the teacher 2. You should not ask students to read the text aloud; at this stage, such a task is ineffective: unprepared reading with many errors will not be useful and will not bring pleasure to either the one who reads or the one who listens.
The text can be read by the teacher or heard in a special educational audio recording (but not in the author's or actor's performance).
2.2. Understanding a foreign language and foreign cultural literary text is not an easy task for the reader. In order for students’ activities to be more effective, it is advisable to divide it into parts (this heuristic technique, coming from Descartes, can be very useful in this case). In our practice, the text is divided into small fragments (minimum - one sentence), relatively independent in semantic terms, on which work is carried out (in a poetic text this can be a line or stanza, in prose - one or several paragraphs).
As a rule, in a literary text it is not a static situation that is presented, but its dynamic unfolding, in other words: the general situation of the text is a sequence mini-situations(the maximum possible number of which is equal to the number of sentences of the text).
During classroom work, it is not always possible to use all the mini-situations that make up the overall situation of a literary text, for example, a story, and therefore it is necessary to make a strict selection, highlighting only the main points (semantic milestones). These must certainly include those mini-situations in which the main characteristics of the general situation of the text are reflected: Who(subject/subjects), What does(event/events), Where(place) and When(time).
The experience of practical educational work shows that the reader’s orientation in the characteristics of the character, the place and time of the events described, etc., as it were, “launches” the mechanism of the reader’s creative (intellectual and emotional) activity. Linguistic means of expressing the main characteristics of the situation (for example, character nominations) are key units text.
2.3. Within the framework of a fragment (mini-situation), work begins with attracting students’ attention to one or another key unit of text, because according to psychologists, starting moment understanding is always the awareness of misunderstanding.
2.3.1. After the attention of students in one way or another (from direct pointing to an object to more complex formulations of questions and tasks) is drawn to the key unit, it is necessary to make sure that its linguistic meaning is known to students. If met unfamiliar word, tasks guide students to independently identify its meaning, i.e. on the use of various cognitive strategies (or linguistic guesses of different types): based on the grammatical appearance of the word, on the syntactic structure of the sentence, on the composition of the word, on context, etc. 3
However, knowing only the meaning of a linguistic unit does not guarantee the reader understanding of the text, because it is important to understand its textual meaning. To clarify the meaning of a text unit in text-based tasks, the following techniques (cognitive strategies) can be used: selection of synonyms with subsequent analysis of the differences in their meanings, reliance on the artistic context, involvement of background knowledge, and common sense etc. 4
These two stages (understanding meaning and sense) constitute a single conceptual level understanding the text, the achievement of which is sufficient when working on any non-fiction text.
2.3.2. The perception of a literary text will be incomplete if the conceptual level is not supplemented by perception on level of ideas.
In the process of reading, units of literary text - verbal images - are transformed in the reader’s mind into reader's ideas, which can be visual, auditory, emotional, etc. Thanks to ideas, the reader’s projection of the text acquires flesh and blood, becoming not a dead imprint, but a living, dynamic picture.
Each reader has his own - characteristic of his style of perception - techniques for recreating the reader's ideas, so the task of the teacher at this stage is not so much to teach new things, but to awaken the reader's creative activity, to activate his own creative activity. This goal can be achieved by tasks that invite the foreign reader to imagine what he is reading about and to describe the images and ideas that arise in the imagination.
Such work encourages the reader to emotionally experience the images of the text and further to aesthetic emotions, which lay the foundations aesthetic perception artistic text. Special tasks aimed at the reader’s perception of a literary text as a work of art are not required.
Thus, work on each key unit is based on a single algorithm: from the language values to the textual meaning and reader's view. The sequence of work on key units is dictated by the text itself, i.e. depends on the order in which they appear before the reader (from the first fragment/mini-situation to the last).
It is desirable that after working on each fragment/mini-situation of a literary text, students are given the opportunity to listen to it (in a recording or reading by the teacher).
2.4. After finishing working on the text in fragments/mini-situations, it is advisable to read the text in its entirety again and/or listen to its full sound recording. It is advisable to use questions for the entire text, asking students to comprehend everything they have read, draw conclusions, evaluate, etc., as homework (written or oral), because To carry out these cognitive operations, the reader (even a native speaker, and even more so a foreign speaker) needs a certain amount of time.
3. Post-text work.
This stage of classroom work, but in our opinion, is optional, because if the textual work was carried out correctly, then “the influence of the read work on the reader’s personality” (O.I. Nikiforova) occurs regardless of whether the appropriate instructions are given or not, otherwise all the “controlling” tasks will not give the desired effect.
And yet, post-text work can be carried out either in the classroom or at home.
At this stage, students are offered generalizing tasks so that they can express their understanding of what they read, their own opinion about the text, as well as tasks that suggest connecting, for example, statements (opinions, ideas, etc.) of the author in the interview they read (pre-text work) with how it is implemented (or reflected, etc.) in a literary text, etc.
Students can get acquainted with additional texts that allow them to develop or deepen the topic, or get to know the author better, etc.
At this stage, it is possible to use educational and professional translation, any forms of visualization and other techniques and means that the teacher deems appropriate and useful.
The result of the reader's activity
Thanks to both the conscious efforts and unconscious actions of the reader, set of textual meanings(i.e. the meanings of key text units) and reader's ideas, and connections between them, extracted by the reader from the text, turns into a certain system, the core of which can be comprehended and expressed as meaning read literary text, personal meaning- the result of the activity of a particular reader.
As practice shows, the described technique can be used by any foreign audience interested in fiction in Russian. Individualization of the educational process is achieved by selecting texts, poetic and prose, that correspond to certain (age, national, professional, etc.) characteristics of the audience.
No preliminary familiarization of students with the “rules of the game” is required: when working on a text (which a foreign reader perceives as a “simple” discussion of what they read, thinking about what how And why is that It is said) the teacher, when formulating tasks, may well make do with language and speech material known to students.
Lessons using the proposed methodology can
1) be included in the language educational process(aspect “Development/practice of speech”) as needed (once a month or with another degree of regularity, as well as from time to time, for example, as a “gift” for the holiday - “Christmas” by I. Brodsky);
2) form a cycle, for example, as part of the course “Reading Fiction”.
With sufficiently long training, students develop and improve the skills of independent reading of texts (and not only literary ones).
Now let's look at a practical example. Let's take one of the textbook poems by A.A. Blok.
1 Night, street, lantern, pharmacy,
2 Pointless and dim light.
3 Live for at least another quarter of a century -
4 Everything will be like this. There is no outcome.
5 If you die, you’ll start over again,
6 And everything will repeat itself as of old:
7 Night, icy ripples of the channel,
8 Pharmacy, street, lamp.
October 10, 1912
Understanding this poem (like any other literary text) involves answering the following questions:
Who is the text talking about? Who is his hero/heroes?
What is he/they doing? What event/events are/are being described?
Where is it all happening?
When?
But it is not enough to simply find words in the text that answer these questions. Need to think: Why is it said this way and not otherwise?
The order of work on this poem can be as follows 5 (omitting the pre-text stage, let’s focus on textual work).
Teacher:
- Read the first two lines of the poem. Find answers to questions in them, When And Where does the event described in the poem happen?
Possible student answers 6 :
- Night.
- City (street).
Teacher:
- Why do you think they are mentioned? flashlight And pharmacy?
Possible answers:
- Maybe, flashlight burns.
- The sign is on pharmacy.
- Light in the pharmacy window. There - on the window - it is written pharmacy.
Teacher:
- What kind of light do you think is being talked about in the second line?
Possible answers:
- This is the light of a lantern.
- Pharmacy window light.
Teacher:
- Why do you think the light is named meaningless And dim 7 ?
Possible answers:
- There is no one on the street. It is unclear for whom it shines.
- The light is weak. Unpleasant.
- Nobody. There's no point in shining.
- Pointless consumption of electricity.
Teacher:
- Who do you think sees and describes this picture? Night, street, pharmacy…?
Teacher:
- Can we understand his condition, what he feels, what is in his soul?
Possible answers:
- He doesn't sleep even though it's night.
- He feels bad, sad, that’s why he doesn’t sleep.
- Something happened, and now there is no point...
Teacher:
- Read the third and fourth lines of the poem. How do you understand them? Who is the poet talking about? live? How - in other words - can you convey the meaning of the third line? Is the expression clear? There is no outcome?
Possible answers:
- You live...
- If you live another 25 years.
- This is a generalization: if you live another quarter of a century... The poet speaks about himself and any person.
- If nothing changes in life, it’s bad.
- No matter what you do, you won’t change anything.
- Exodus, maybe this is the way out? No exit.
- He feels very bad... And scared.
Teacher:
- Read the fifth and sixth lines. How can you understand them?
Possible answers:
- If you die, will you start all over again? Unclear!
- Maybe he thinks that death will not change anything?
- Death won't help.
- He feels very bad.
- He is suffering...
- And no one can help him. 8
Teacher:
- Read the poem to the end. Notice that the last lines almost repeat the first two. What new does the reader learn and what conclusions can he draw?
Possible answers:
- New information icy ripples of the channel. Cold.
- This is winter.
- No, autumn. The poem was written on October 10.
- Ripple means the wind is blowing. Cold wind.
- In this city there is channel. Maybe this is St. Petersburg.
- Or Venice?
- If Blok, then Petersburg!
Teacher:
- Why do you think the poet begins and ends the poem almost the same?
Possible answers
- There is no outcome.
- Nothing can be changed.
- The circle is closed.
Teacher:
- Read the poem in its entirety. How do you imagine his character? Where is he located?
Possible answers:
- He looks like Blok.
- This is a man. Poet.
- He's not on the street.
- He is in the room. Standing at the window.
- Looking out the window. Sees an empty dark night street...
- The lantern sways in the wind.
- It's dark in the room. He is alone.
- He's lonely.
Teacher:
- What do you think this poem is about?
Possible answers
- About a lonely person.
- About loneliness.
- About longing.
What can you call this work on the text of a poem?
Linguistic analysis?
Yes and no. Yes, because we parsed words, sentences, i.e. linguistic units. No, because the main thing was not the linguistic meanings of these units, but those meanings that arise on their basis in this artistic text, i.e. we are dealing with text units. We also talked about those ideas and images that arise in the reader’s mind when reading this poem by Alexander Blok.
So, maybe this is literary analysis? But we did not use literary terminology and, perhaps, our analysis will seem amateurish to a literary scholar.
The main objective of the methodology we propose is for students to master the skills of independent work on text, learned to effectively use the necessary cognitive strategies at all levels of perception of a literary text and thereby received “open access” to everything that was created, is being created and will be created by writers and poets in Russian
What are the specifics of the proposed approach?
For us text was original reality. We approached him with unified philological position(simultaneously the point of view of language and literature) and were focused on reality whole text
. Our efforts were aimed at implementing possibilities of human understanding.
Philology - the art of understanding what is said and written, or the service of understanding- helped us fulfill one of the main human tasks - to understand another... (the highlighted words belong to S.S. Averintsev [Averintsev 1990: 545]).
Thus, we can say that the methodology we propose for teaching reading fiction implements philological approach to literary text
.
Literature:
Averintsev 1990 - Averintsev S.S. Article Philology // Linguistic encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1990.
Kulibina 2000 - Kulibina N.V. Literary text in linguodidactic comprehension. - M., State. IRE, 2000.
Kulibina 2001 - Kulibina N.V. Why, what and how to read in class. - St. Petersburg, Zlatoust, 2001.
Kulibina 2004 Kulibina N.V. Written by women. A reading guide for students of Russian as a foreign language. - M., Russian language. Courses, 2004
Kulibina 2008- Kulibina N.V. We read Russian in class and at home. Book for the student. - Riga, RETORIKA-A. 2008.
Kulibina 2008a Kulibina N.V. We read Russian in Russian language lessons. Book for teachers. - Riga RETORIKA-A. 2008.
Kulibina 2014 - Kulibina N.V. We read poems by Russian poets. Textbook for students of Russian as a foreign language (7th edition) - St. Petersburg, Zlatoust, 2014.
Lotman 1972 - Lotman Yu.M. Analysis poetic text: Verse structure. - M., 1972
Lotman 1998 - Lotman Yu.M. Inside thinking worlds. Man - text - semiosphere - history. - M., Languages of Russian culture, 1999.
Dr. ped. sciences, professor
State Institute
Russian language named after. A.S. Pushkin.
Moscow, Russia
1 Similar to how uninteresting and even pointless it becomes to read a detective story if you already know who the criminal is.
2 See educational materials in [Kulibina 2001; 2004; 2008a; 2014].
3 For more information about cognitive strategies, see [Kulibina 2000; 2001; 2008a].
4 For more details, see ibid.
5 Before reading a poem, students should not be told anything about its content so that they have the opportunity to draw their own conclusions.
6 Here and below, under the heading “Possible student answers” (hereinafter “Possible answers”), real student answers recorded in lessons are used. In some cases, the answers received in different groups are shown side by side; this is done to make the students’ train of thought more clear, because not always every stage of reasoning is verbalized, i.e. formalized by the participants in the discussion as a speech utterance
7 If there are doubts that students know the lexical meanings of the words meaningless and dull, you can invite students to use one of the cognitive strategies [Kulibina 2001] to establish the meaning of an unclear word. In the first case, this is a reliance on the composition of the word, on the known prefix bes- and the root meaning-, which allows one to draw a conclusion about the meaning of the entire word, and in the second - on the reader’s extralinguistic knowledge of what the light of a lonely lantern on a dark street is like, as one might call its (dull, weak, etc.)
8 We believe that students should not be required to interpret these lines in more depth; it is enough if they understand the condition lyrical hero poems (by the poet himself?) and sympathize with him.
Why read fiction? Isn't this activity a waste of time? Is it worth wasting your precious time on fictional characters When do the works of the Holy Fathers of the Church remain unread?
In fact, if main goal reading assume only receiving necessary information, then you only need to read spiritual, reference and educational literature. Meanwhile, obtaining information is not the only, and perhaps not the main task of reading.
While documentary literature reveals facts and truths to the reader, fiction literature, influencing the emotional sphere, reveals human soul to accept these truths, strengthens the ability to perceive and process information. A person who reads good fiction better understands other people, their thoughts, feelings, and motivations for their actions; it is easier for him to analyze various life situations, build your own destiny and relationships with other people.
Fiction, like other types of art, can be attributed to the spiritual sphere of our life. And this is exactly the area where it originates human personality. The Holy Fathers note that it is the development of spiritual qualities that makes a person aesthetically sensitive, refines him, loosens his soul, preparing him for spiritual growth. Can a person, without developing his spiritual qualities, grow spiritually? The Apostle Paul answers this question by saying: “But what is spiritual is not first, but what is natural, then what is spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:45).
In addition, fiction provides invaluable psychological and moral material for studying life, human destinies, their experience of ups and downs. One of the works of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) is called: “Pastoral study of life and people based on the works of Dostoevsky.”
At the same time, it is important to have a selective approach to reading, since everything we read leaves its mark on our soul, leaving its mark on it. Today, in the conditions of “tolerance” imposed on society, when sin has become considered the norm, this is especially relevant.
The Orthodox online store “Zerna” provides its readers with the opportunity to choose books to their liking and for the soul, including works of fiction. It's not only best works Russian and foreign classics, but also books by modern Orthodox authors. On our virtual shelves you can find such names as Ivan Shmelev, Vasily Nikiforov-Volgin, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov), Nina Pavlova, Olga Rozhneva, Alexander Donskikh, Archpriest Nikolai Agafonov, Natalya Sukhinina, Archpriest Yaroslav Shipov, Maria Sarajishvili, Vladimir Krupin, Marina Goncharenko, Natalya Gorbacheva and many, many others.
A good copywriter and writer is one who reads a lot.
I came across an interesting phenomenon. On the one hand, people love to read, and a lot of them.
On the other hand, there is a catastrophic lack of time.
But I would say it differently - motivation. What you really need is to deal with laziness/lack of motivation and read constantly. It's difficult to do this using conventional methods.
Frankly speaking, a year ago I read little.
But 2014 was a breakthrough year. I read a lot. I renewed my deep interest in reading. I read “War and Peace”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, almost all of Remarque, “A Farewell to Arms” by Hemingway, Shakespeare, Golding, Solnzhenitsyn, Bunin.
And at the same time I had a huge amount of work, tasks and responsibilities.
It's all about the system. Which gives me the necessary motivation.
But before that, let's discuss why people stop reading books?
Why do people stop reading books? Or how to read and not get tired?
The reasons are always different. But they are similar:
- The plot is weak
- No interest.
- The hero does not have
When a writer works, he puts all of himself into his work. Pictured: James Bond author Ian Fleming
Very often you draw a conclusion not on the basis of the entire book, but only on some part.
For example, I’m currently reading “The Idiot” by Dostoevsky. And somewhere in the middle of the book I got stuck, less interest, and I move more slowly. But now for me this is no longer a reason to put off reading.
What books should I read? My way of “reading and not getting tired”
- Main - motive. The motive should be simple - to write well. Tell yourself, “I want to write really well.” (must be out loud so you can hear yourself)
- Start learning from someone who has already completed this school and writes well - from recognized writers.
- Choose an author whose style and skill appeal to you
You can choose according to the topic he is considering.
In fiction:
- Themes of God, Christ, Church, State - Dostoevsky, Tolstoy
- Themes of social inequality - Dickens, Zola,
- War themes - Hemingway, Aldington, Remarque
- Theme of emigration - Remarque
- Teenage Rebellion Theme - Sallinger
- Love - Margaret Mitchell, Jane Austen.
- The Decay of Society - Thackeray "Vanity Fair", "Lord of the Flies" Golding
- Murders and investigations - Agatha Christie, Chase, Edgar Allan Poe (all)
- Fantasy - Tolkien, Clive Lewis,
- Historical novels - Zweig (review of one of his excellent short stories)
- Horror - Stephen King
Bernard Shaw at work
— according to the chronology of creation (This is how I read Remarque, from the very first to the last “Shadow in Paradise”)
- by topic (for example, only those that talk about a topic that interests you)
- the most important books
- Synthesis: book + author's life during this period - are always of great interest to me.
- Read a book like the author.
- rewrite a small part of it. Feel yourself in the shoes of the creator of this book.
Pushkin, Chekhov and Tolstoy
Thanks to this method, you learn more of the author's technique. You stop being just a reader and become an observer.
And I read the same “The Idiot” with pleasure, studying the development of the plot, the writer’s interest, and writing techniques. And the book continues to develop.
What does the system of reading fiction books look like in practice?
- Example of Dostoevsky
Dostoevsky put everything aside when he wrote The Brothers Karamazov. It was an obsession novel, as Dmitry Bykov says - that is, a novel into which Dostoevsky invested all his ghosts. Everything that tormented him, interested him, everything difficult questions its reality - in this book.
He corresponded with Pobedonostsev on church issues. He visited Optina Pustyn with Vladimir Solovyov in 1878.
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
This the only book he wrote without haste. He created all the rest in a terrible fever, sending chapter after chapter to the editorial office of the magazine. And all the time he complained: “If only I could write like Turgenev. No rush." And that's why "The Brothers Karamazov" one of Dostoevsky's calmest and most thoughtful books.
At the same time, he wrote The Brothers Karamazov as a deeply sick man. It is said that the attacks of epilepsy to which he was subject were repeated every week. And this titanic work is created from last bit of strength writer. He died 4 months after finishing the book.
I wrote all this right now, without opening Wikipedia or sources. I am so interested in Dostoevsky, his books and how he created them, that for me the entire book and biography of the writer is a plot convoy.
- Second example. Leo Tolstoy and "War and Peace"
Tolstoy created his "War and Peace" after the publication of Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables in 1862. He was so inspired by HOW Hugo created his book that he followed the example of his French colleague. Lev Nikolaevich postponed work on the novel several times since 1856. But after the release of Les Misérables, he began writing his War and Peace. Either he realized that he could do no worse, or he was simply inspired by the volume of the book and, at the same time, it is difficult to say by the scale of the events depicted. But the fact remains - Lev Nikolaevich began serious work since 1863.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
- Third example. Remarque
I decided to devote the entire 2014 to studying Russian literature. But in the middle of the summer of 2014, I got tired of it. I became very interested in Remarque. So I read it avidly. I devoured it like pies on the beach in the summer.
- No change on the Western Front
- Three comrades (review, by the way)
- Return (read earlier)
- love thy neighbour
- Triumphal Arch
- Night in Lisbon
- Collection “Anneta's Love Story” (stories)
- Shadows in Paradise
After this, I began to understand much better not only the topics that deeply concerned the author. I began to understand exactly how he worked.
For example, Remarque did not live in his native Germany after 1933. There was serious pressure on him. He first moved to Switzerland and then immigrated to the USA. It is the pain of emigrants, memories of home country He captured this period in his books - “Love Thy Neighbor” (by the way, my favorite of his) and “Arc de Triomphe”. Insecurity and social helplessness are shown so strongly in these books that I began to look at my passport as a huge value.
Erich Maria Remarque
Or, for example, it’s interesting that in one of his interviews Remarque said something like this:
“I tried to write my first novels, but it didn’t work out. But when I wrote to " Western Front", I found my style. And then I already knew how to write.”
And it’s true, all the other books are similar in style to this one that shot.
He created his book “All Quiet on the Western Front” in just 6 weeks. Then it took another six months to edit.
- Fourth example. Hemingway
In the same way, I studied Hemingway's work.
Just not so compressed, but rather at different times
- Early stories (Paris period 1922 to 1926)
- Fiesta, 1926
- A Farewell to Arms, 1929 (review coming soon)
- For whom the bell tolls, 1940
- The Old Man and the Sea, 1953
- Miss Mary's Lion, 1955
Thanks to this study, Hemingway was much closer and clearer to me.
The fact is that a writer puts the best he can into his books. So that they are remembered and hooked.
One of my favorite photographs of the writer. The hard work and labor on every word is visible.
Interestingly, Hemingway wrote Fiesta when his first wife, Hadley Richardson, left him. You understand the book more deeply. He wrote the second book, “A Farewell to Arms,” when he was already famous author. However, while he was editing it, his father shot himself with a gun in 1928.
My plan for 2014. Fiction books - read
Everything is really very simple here.
I decided that I should know a lot of quality fiction. To write well.
I set myself a plan for the period. For example, as I said above, I set a plan for 2014 - to study the best Russian literature.
No sooner said than done.
Read:
- Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace"
- Leo Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
- Bunin
- Kuprin
- Solnzhenitsyn
- Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov"
Not much to begin with. But for me, Russian literature has greatly expanded.
The main advantage of this method of reading books:
- You write better. In fact.
- Understand creativity better
- Get to know your favorite authors better
- Memorability of books, facts, events is good
Conclusion. Read fiction books with the right motivation
This knowledge, these facts are very inspiring. I understand for myself that these writers are not gods, but ordinary people. They were inspired by others. They were wrong. But they continued to write.
For myself, I made a plan of 15 art books world classics that I commit to reading in 2015. (I wrote about this at the end of 2014). This year I'm interested in world classic, the best of everything created. What can be safely called art, and not consumer goods.
You can replace any book from the list by reading another one. The list will be longer, but my minimum is 15 books.
I'm sure you'll be more motivated to read now. And that makes me happy.
We can definitely say that there is still no clear answer to this question. There are several different approaches possible here.
How to read fiction? There is a very simple answer to this question: as artistic. But after this, obviously, the following question arises: what is the artistry of literature? If you are interested in this issue, we recommend reading a book that fully reveals this concept: N. K. Gey, Artisticity of Literature. - M., 1975. In our book, only the main approaches to the problem will be discussed. It is not by chance that we are considering this issue, for there is literature called fiction, which, upon closer examination, is not such. In our opinion, it is very important to be able to understand this. In order to show the complexity and depth of the problem of measuring artistic value, let's look at the graph shown in Fig. 41. This shows the dependence of the value of a work of art on a number of basic factors. Note that researchers led by the famous French scientist A. Mole consider this graph to be universal for all types of art: literature, music, fine arts, etc.
Rice. 41. Graph of the dependence of the value of a work of art on a number of factors
As the graph shows, a work of art represents a message characterized by a degree of complexity or amount of information, which in turn depends on the culture of a given society. As shown in the graph, the value of a work varies depending on its complexity, following a curve that has a maximum at some point. This maximum shifts in the process of historical development of society and the growth of its culture. At the same time, it becomes blurred as a result of a more uniform distribution of cultural elements. In other words, the general evolution of art leads to the emergence of increasingly refined and difficult to understand combinations of elements, that is, what is called incomprehensible in every era. How can one disagree with Goethe’s famous statement:
Everyone sees the world in a different form,
And everyone is right -
It makes so much sense.
The science of art has long and persistently struggled to decipher the nature of artistic creation. Each writer, based on the specific content of the words, creates a literary text in which the combination of words is not arbitrary, but depends on the meaning and significance of the constituent elements. As a result, the word receives a special, no longer verbal, but figurative meaning, which distinguishes an artistic text from a scientific one, where everything is subordinated to logic, and only to it. The poetic content of the word presupposes the existence of an infinite number of images in the artistic world. The essence of a truly artistic work is manifested in the fact that the word appears here not as a means of information or message, but as an actor in whom they see not himself, but the image that he embodies. When a writer writes: “There was an apple in the world. It shone in the foliage, rotated lightly, grabbed and turned with it pieces of the day, the blue of the garden, the frame of a window” (Yu. Olesha), then this is not the naming of objects in a word, but rather the transformation of words into objects, into visual images arising in the mind reader in the process of reading.
And here we come to the most important thing: what can quick reading give for the perception of fiction?
The main thing is not to accelerate the reading process, but to deepen the aesthetic impact through the development of visual, figurative components of thinking in the reading process. It is no coincidence that many schoolchildren, after completing speed reading courses, noted a sharp increase in the visual components of the reading process. “It’s as if I’m not reading, but watching an interesting movie with all the characters, events, landscapes that are described in the book,” wrote one of our listeners.
M. Gorky, whose fast reading we talked about at the beginning of the book, read literary texts quickly precisely because he was distinguished by vivid imagery of perception. Even as a child, while reading books, Alyosha Peshkov imagined what he read so clearly that he was amazed by the magical power of the printed line and, not understanding the secret hidden in the literary word, examined the pages in the light.
Is there an algorithm for reading works of fiction? Experts have developed three levels of penetration, or immersion, into a literary text, which are a kind of reading algorithms.
The first stage of immersion: understand the plot and plot. The writer resorts to plot to show what the hero does, what he does, how he acts. The reader’s task is to follow all this and not miss anything. This stage can be called “event” or “plot”. All readers master it. Researchers have noticed that at this stage of perception, when retelling, many people mainly use verbs denoting action. So, when retelling the film “Come to me, Mukhtar!” out of 175 words, there were 32 verbs denoting action, and only 1 - state. Up to 80% of young viewers are characterized by this level of perception.
Is it important to know the action - the plot? Undoubtedly. A good understanding of the plot and plot of a work means getting closer to understanding the psychology of the writer’s creativity and his skill.
The writer’s art of “telling” is a special art that requires that as the story progresses, the reader’s interest constantly increases.
The second stage of immersion: the reader’s ability to identify himself with the character, to compare his fate with the vicissitudes of his fate. At this stage of perception, it is necessary to understand the complex structure of relationships between the characters, the motives of their likes and dislikes, actions and behavior - the artistic conflict of the work. This level can also be called “semantic”. The reader, as in the first case, shows interest in poignant situations, but he is concerned not only with the fate of the heroes, but also with their experiences. He feels more acutely his own feelings about his actions characters. Everything is etched into the memory: the landscape, the setting, and the appearance of the characters. When talking about a book, the reader conveys not only actions (left, came, disappeared), but also the experiences of the heroes (hates, loves, doubts).
The central, and often the only figure in all artistic creativity is man. It is impossible to imagine a literary work without heroes, without characters, no matter what type it belongs to. In lyric poetry, the hero himself is the author; in epic and drama, there is always one or more heroes.
When reading a work of fiction, we almost never go beyond human world, very similar to the real one, but at the same time not a simple repetition of it. We do not doubt the conventionality of literary images, but at times they acquire such reality for us that we consider them as truly existing.
The third stage of immersion: identification of the reader with the author-artist. It is called figurative and semantic. Its essence could be expressed in the famous words of L.N. Tolstoy, who said that the reader picks up a book in order to see what kind of person the author is and what he, the author, has in his soul.
A work of art always reflects the level of personal aesthetic knowledge of the writer. Creative knowledge is, first of all, self-knowledge. An artist, creating a work, to one degree or another expresses his vision of the world. This is one level. It can be described as a “small” world. The writer’s attitude to the environment, time, and contemporaries can conventionally be called the “average” world. This is another level. A great artist never stops at these levels. For him, both of them are the path leading to knowledge of the big world, the macrocosm - the universe, humanity. Having understood these levels of knowledge and determined their nature, we will come closer to understanding “the secret of the unity of the author with his heroes,” the secret of the process of personal creativity, and therefore we will be able to more accurately understand what the writer wanted to say to his reader. It is important to establish what the writer knew, what he understood and what remained beyond his consciousness, and what he, due to various reasons, I couldn’t figure it out.
At the end of this conversation, read test text No. 9. Try to read as quickly as possible, but, most importantly, awaken in your mind vivid visual images, ideas of what the author writes about. After finishing reading the text, do not rush to answer the questions as usual. sit, think, reflect. Check whether you have memorized all the blocks of the integral reading algorithm and whether there are any gaps.
Using the formula you know, calculate your reading speed and enter the result in a graph and table of your successes.
Test text No. 9 Volume 5500 characters
PRINCIPLES OF “CHALLENGE” (about the ways in which high quality goods are achieved in Japan)
A teleconference between students in Japan and the United States was coming to an end when the host in Tokyo made a sneaky move. After listening to a tirade from an overseas colleague about the reluctance of the Far Eastern allies to open their market to American products, he paused and unexpectedly commanded into the microphone: “Let those who buy goods with the mark “made in the USA” raise their hands! No one in the hall moved. “Who uses only Japanese products?” A forest of hands immediately shot up.
“You know,” one of the Tokyo students explained, looking into the television camera, “it’s not about nationalism. It’s just that our products are cheaper and better quality than Western ones.” However, not only residents of the Japanese islands think so. “It’s time to understand,” writes the New York Times, “that the secret of the success of Far Eastern businessmen in foreign markets lies not in deceit, not in violating the “gentlemanly rules of trade,” but “in the ability to produce good goods and achieve constant improvement.” How did Japanese businessmen win the right to such compliments from their worst competitors? One of the answers is in the activities of quality circles, which have become the most important means of mobilizing tens of millions of people in Japan.
Behind a metal table littered with diagrams are eight young workers, members of the Challenge group. She operates on the engine technical inspection line of the giant Toyota automobile plant in the central part of the island of Honshu. Guys in neat beige uniforms joke, laugh loudly, and drink green tea. . . Once a week, they stay for about an hour after work in a room allocated for them in the workshop and discuss ways to solve the next problem of rationalization and quality improvement. The topic is chosen together and then approved by the boss. The intervention of the workshop management is minimal, although the site foreman is an indispensable participant in all debates and often directs the survey work himself. This time, the Challenge group is trying to reduce engine noise, which is why the new Toyota model is not well received by potential buyers. “We have considered some options. There is an idea to change the shape of the muffler,” says one of the workers, and the group members again bend over the diagram.
(
The Challenge group is just one of 240 thousand quality circles that now cover the core of Japanese workers and technicians. This movement has acquired a truly total character here, and participation in the struggle for all kinds of improvements has become almost an integral element of the local way of life. Such circles operate in dry cleaners and car service centers, in eateries and even in nightclubs. However, the main field of activity is the sphere of material production.
According to Japanese economists, the mistake of the West is that it takes the path of strengthening external control over the worker, viewing him as a lazy person or even as a hidden saboteur. The supervision system is being tightened, unexpected inspections and increasingly formidable commissions are being introduced. In other words, the product manufacturer and quality control are separated and even opposed to each other. The Japanese are convinced that the controller should first of all be the worker himself.
Quality circles as a national phenomenon were born in April 1962, when the decision to create them was made by an all-Japan conference with the participation of leading businessmen and economic experts. They began to publish a cheap magazine on anti-marital problems, accessible to every worker. Then a national headquarters for quality circles was created, which now has five powerful regional branches.
In fact, all members of Japanese production teams act as individual inspectors and are collectively responsible for identifying defects. The principle is simple: if you notice a problem, immediately fix it yourself. If you can't, call for help. If there is not enough time, stop the conveyor. The main slogan: “Do what you want, but the defect must not pass!” Through the efforts of experienced managers at Japanese enterprises, an environment has been created where any missed marriage becomes a powerful psychological drama. Here is another example: a group of milling and grinding workers at the Nihon Musen electrical products plant in Nagano decided to dramatically reduce the level of defects on their site. For two months the workers monitored themselves, drawing diagrams and graphs. It was found that the greatest failure occurs when marking workpieces, and primarily at the beginning and end of each shift.
Members of the circle decided, on their own initiative, to hold three- to five-minute meetings every day to “concentrate attention” and introduced a system of mutual inspection, when workers from neighboring machines took turns checking each other. As a result, in seven months of intense activity, the circle managed to
reduce the defect rate by forty percent. However, such huge achievements, of course, are not achieved often.
The main focus is on constant quality control and a continuous process of minor improvements. Invented a more convenient screwdriver handle? Prize! A trifle, you say? But such “little things” at Japanese enterprises add up to the high quality of goods, achieved only through the use of internal resources.
In Japan, quality conferences of various levels are continuously held, to which the best innovators are sent. The organizers of the movement proceed from the fact that the struggle to improve products must be all-out, since a small number of enthusiasts will never be able to achieve results if they find themselves surrounded by indifferent or even hostile workers.
N. L. Leizerov
“Reading books... has become my main occupation and only pleasure,” noted sixteen-year-old Nikolai Aleksandrovich Dobrolyubov, a future Russian critic and thinker, in one of his letters. As a boy, Nikolai Aleksandrovich kept special notebooks, “registers,” where he “entered the names of the books he read, their ratings, and individual critical comments. The choice of books for young Dobrolyubov to read is striking in their breadth and focus. Wanting to experience life and understand his thoughts and feelings, the young man always turned to fiction.
For the best understanding literary work is always necessary take into account its generic and genre signs. There are three main types of literature: lyrics, epic and drama. Works of the first type include mainly different types poems; main species dramatic works- tragedy, drama, comedy, and epic - novel, story, story, essay.
In a lyrical work feelings, moods, thoughts are conveyed, and life appears before the reader exclusively through the experiences of the writer or the hero depicted by him. In every poem, first of all, we must look for these expressions of the inner life of people, conveyed by the poet. The main genres of lyrics: landscape lyrics, which express the poets’ attitude to nature, for example, “The Cliff” by M. Yu. Lermontov, “To the Sea” by A. S. Pushkin, “The Uncompressed Strip” by N. L. Nekrasov, etc.; socio-political lyrics include such poems as “Testament” by T. G. Shevchenko, “Poet and Citizen” by N. A. Nekrasov, “Poems about the Soviet Passport” by V. V. Mayakovsky, etc., in which it is embodied poets' understanding of contemporary public life; love lyrics convey feelings and experiences related to a person’s personal life, for example, “I remember wonderful moment"A. S. Pushkin, "And who knows him" by M. V. Isakovsky and others; philosophical lyrics conveys reflections on the meaning of human life: “Am I wandering along the noisy streets” by A. S. Pushkin, “Duma” by M. Yu. Lermontov, “Comrade Netta” by V. V. Mayakovsky, etc.
Poems are recommended to be read aloud. “Just as the beauty of flowers is revealed only in the greenness of the foliage, so poetry acquires its power only in masterful reading” (Rabindranath Tagore).
TO dramatic kind literature These include works intended, as a rule, for performance on stage. The author's intention in them is revealed through the words and actions of the characters.
In dramatic works, certain individuals (characters) act and react. Depending on the nature of the conflict between them, dramatic works are divided into three types. The conflict of tragedy contains the conditions for the inevitable death of one of the fighting parties (“Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare, “Optimistic Tragedy” by Vs. Vishnevsky, etc.); conflicts in drama cause difficult experiences of clashing forces (“The Thunderstorm” by A. N. Ostrovsky, “Yarovaya Love” by K. Trenev, etc.); in comedy, conflicts contribute to ridiculing what is backward, obsolete, and unnecessary in life (“Tartuffe, or the Deceiver” by Moliere, “Our People, Let Us Be Numbered” by A. N. Ostrovsky, etc.).
The main thing when reading dramatic works is to correctly understand the meaning of the conflict on which the work is built, and for this it is necessary to have at least a general understanding of the features of the composition of plays.
Novels, stories, stories in literary theory are usually called epic works(from the Greek word meaning "story"). In the epic, life is reflected in the narration about a person and the events in which he participated, about his behavior and experiences in various circumstances, about his attitude to various phenomena of life and other people.
In stories Most often the story is told about one incident, one event in people’s lives. Using these isolated examples, the authors strive to show clashes of characters, views, and passions. Each story is a new acquaintance, as if an unexpected meeting with different types of people, useful trip in life, material for thought and conclusions. To understand what the author wanted to say with his story, its ending (denouement) is especially important.
Most complex look narrative works - novel. Here, unlike a story and a story, there are usually many characters whose destinies and interests collide and intertwine. Human life appears before the reader of the novel in all its complexity and inconsistency. Such, for example, are the novels of I. S. Turgenev, L. N. Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, V. Hugo and many other writers. Novels are divided according to their themes into social, historical, family and everyday life, philosophical, science fiction, adventure and others, but it is not always easy to fit novels into the framework of the listed types.
From episode to episode, from action to action, the life of the characters in the books appears before the reader. It passes before us in the form of moving, interconnected pictures drawn with the help of words. In order to get a complete impression of what we read, we must carefully look at all the details of the paintings, evaluate and understand them from the point of view of the whole work. Only then will it be clear to us, for example, the inextricable connection of the spring Don landscape with the fate of Andrei Sokolov, the hero of Mikhail Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man”, only then will every word, every action of the hero be understood.
Only as a result careful reading the ideological and thematic basis of the work begins to gradually emerge before us, i.e. the circle phenomena of life, selected and evaluated by the author from the perspective of a certain worldview. There is nothing worse than easy, thoughtless reading, when the reader only follows general development events in the book. Such a reader, as a rule, does not pay attention to details, to the landscape, to internal monologues heroes, for author's digressions.
In a literary work, everything is interconnected: words, pictures, characters, events and the author’s thoughts behind them. And if so, then, when analyzing the works, we must understand everything that the author wanted to say, vividly imagine and understand the meaning of the pictures of life reproduced by the artist.
Each of you will read thousands of books in your life. It is difficult to retain impressions of each of them. Therefore, it is recommended that after reading a book, think it over, compare the behavior of the characters with your own, write down your impressions in a special literary diary. You can also write down individual passages from the book that you remember, poems you especially liked, etc.
But knowing how to start reading a work of fiction and how to read it is not enough. Necessary be able to choose a book. The ability to read as the ability to understand what is read is not given immediately, it comes over the years in the process of regular and systematic reading, which has become the most essential human need, comes as a result of studying literature and enriching life experience.
In the essay “How I Learned,” Maxim Gorky writes that he began to consciously read fiction at the age of fourteen. By conscious reading, Gorky understood the ability to understand the development of the events depicted by the author, the character of the characters, the beauty of the descriptions, and most importantly, the ability to understand the writer’s goals and critically compare what the book says with what life suggests.
In order for reading to be meaningful and conscious, the so-called reading culture, requiring compliance with certain rules.
First of all, this is a careful choice of reading range. It's good to plan ahead reading list on a chosen topic, in consultation with a literature teacher or librarian. It goes without saying that the choice of books depends on the topic in which the reader is interested.
When the list of books on the topic is ready, you need to take care of reference and additional literature.
Our reading will only become truly conscious when we have a sufficient understanding of the life reflected in a work of art and receive at least basic information about the author. For these purposes, books contain a preface or afterword, dictionaries of obscure words and commentaries. However, the inquisitive reader is sometimes not satisfied with the reference apparatus of the book, not to mention the fact that it may not appear at all in the publication that we have to use. It is most correct therefore, along with the list works of art outline a list of additional popular science and critical literature.
After reading the book, you need to figure out what the author wanted to say with his work, what artistic media he used it to realize his plan.
Having closed the book, we should always have an idea of our attitude towards reading. Thus, the culture of reading closely leads to the ability to independently analyze a literary work, and it also leads to school study literature. When reading independently, you need to use the knowledge acquired in class.
Already studying literature at school, we begin to understand that there is no and cannot be ready-made scheme analysis of a literary work. The nature of the analysis, as a rule, is suggested by the characteristics of the work being analyzed, its generic and genre characteristics.
Reading literary works - poems, plays, stories, novels and others - improves our sense of perception of beauty in reality and works of art, enriches us with knowledge of human psychology, and educates our characters.
The effort spent on reading and assimilating artistically valuable works brings enormous benefits to the overall spiritual development person.
