READING COMPETENCE OF THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS OF SPECIALTY ‘PEDAGOGICAL EDUCATION’ MAJORING IN ‘PRIMARY EDUCATION’
Authors:   Transbaikal State University, Kurganskaya A. V. 
Published: February 2021

Introduction. Today, reading is one of the language activities that consists not only of transforming letters into sounds. It is one of the meta-subject skills, which affect learning success. One of the priority objectives set in the Federal State Educational Standard for Primary General Education is to create the necessary level of reading competence in junior students. Consequently, the level of reading competence in students, i.e., future primary school teachers, should be high. The study aims to identify the level of reading competence in first-year students of the specialty ‘Pedagogical education’ (44.03.01) majoring in Primary education. The objectives of the research are to carry out a theoretical analysis of the reading competence issue, identify criteria for reading competence formation in first-year students, identify their levels of reading competence, and propose tasks to develop reading competence in first-year students. Materials and methods. The paper is devoted to the analysis of reading competence in the first-year students majoring in Primary Education. The paper presents the results of the tasks completed by first-year students. Students’ results were analyzed according to the criteria of efficiency, flexibility, maturity, and activity. Results of the study. The analysis has indicated that, in general, reading competence in the students is at the average level. According to the criteria of ‘efficiency’ (a high level of understanding the information read), ‘flexibility’ (the ability to change reading strategies), and ‘maturity’ (the ability to switch from one form of information presentation to another), the students are mainly at a medium and low level. In our opinion, this is because many students do not have a well-developed ability to carefully read information, and identify the essentials. According to the criterion ‘activity’ (the ability to use the information obtained from reading), more than half of the first-year students showed a low level, which indicates that they are not able to analyze and express their thoughts on what they read. Based on monitoring of reading competence in the first-year students of specialty Pedagogical Education (44.03.01) majoring in Primary Education, we have developed and proposed tasks aimed at building reading competence. These, in particular, include keeping a literary dictionary; keeping a reader’s diary; analyzing literary works for children; self-analyzing of reading the literary works for children, with their systematization by the time of writing, themes, genres; a compilation of chronological tables on the development of children’s literature in Russia, and others. Conclusion. The paper proposes constant monitoring of reading competence, which will provide an objective picture of reading competence in students and the identification of factors affecting the quality of reading skills. Keywords: competence, reading competence, federal state educational standard of primary general education, formation of reading competence.