Academic texts reviewing as a productive training task

Abstract

Introduction. The process of creation of academic texts by students is actively studied in the global higher education system in connection with the target of shaping students’ general research and learning activities. The aim of the paper is studying the specifics of students’ abstracting scientific texts, viewed as a productive learning task. Materials and methods. The study of the scientific texts abstracting process involved 125 second-year Bachelor degree students majoring in engineering and technical fields. The survey involved qualitative and quantitative content analysis of texts of abstracts. A fragment of students’ substantiation of applied relevance of a selected topic in the academic discipline “Fundamentals of Psychology” served as a unit of the analysis. Results. As shown by the analysis of the abstracts’ content, a total of 88% of students originally treated the abstracting task as a reproductive target, i.e. the abstract is treated as a text compiled from materials of educational, methodological and scientific literature. After refining the texts of abstracts, 76% of the students eventually reached the level of explicit personalised substantiation of practical application of the theoretical knowledge. Abstracting as a productive learning target contains novelty and variability of solutions; its fulfilment supposes the students’ effective substantiation of the applied significance of the explored subject. Under this condition, such components of the abstracting process as motivational, intellectual, operational, axiological and communicative ones are actualised. Conclusion. It is possible to distinguish two main strategies of teaching students to create scientific texts: 1) formation of specific skills, abilities and competences; 2) development of scientific worldview, academic literacy, methodological culture. In the authors’ opinion, every subject area, types of preparation work and academic classes have a potential for simultaneous realisation of the given positions. Further research should envisage perfection of the individual approach towards involvement of greater number of students in solving productive/creative learning targets.