Diagnostics of text creativity in teaching the Russian language

The approaches to the interpretation of the concept of creativity in linguistics and related sciences are considered and the task of defining the criteria for evaluating a creative text is set. Creativity is understood as a meta-subject competence, which along with critical thinking, cooperation and communication abilities is part of the system of “soft skills”. Aim and objectives – to develop the evaluation scale for creativity of texts created by students in Russian language on the basis of functional stylistics, creative stylistics and linguistic personality theory. The question of creative writing evaluation criteria has been studied in an interdisciplinary context, i.e., in the light of related sciences (speech science, psychology, pedagogy, linguistic didactics, and Russian language teaching methods). The empirical material is represented by texts created by secondary school students as part of creative assignments in Russian language. In accordance with the postulates of functional stylistics the text is interpreted in the unity of the content and surface-speech sides. The notion of creative competence is defined based on the three-level structure of linguistic personality including verbal-semantic, pragmatic- stylistic and cognitive levels. In the development of the multyicriteria approach to the measurement of text creativity special attention is paid to the development of the creative speech behavior of a learner and motivation of his creative activity. Universal criteria for diagnosing text creativity have been established. As evaluation parameters it is proposed to take into account: 1) functional literacy of the author of the text; 2) presence of a general creative idea supported by facts and the author’s own position; 3) compositional and semantic correctness of the text (coherence and integrity); 4) nontrivial expressiveness of speech; 5) speech literacy. Formation of creative competences in the process of Russian language learning should be systematic and be conducted in unity with the formation of linguistic, linguistic, communicative and cultural competences. The main principles of assessing students’ creative works include multi-criteria approach to measuring the quality of creativity; prohibition of criticism that can provoke creative blockage; different forms of text assessment.

creativity, speech creativity, creative linguistics, creative stylistics, creative text, creative text evaluation