In this dissertation, methods of teaching literary characters in high school foreign literature courses is developed and scientifically substantiated. These methods rely on conceptual principles of philosophy, literary science, linguistics, psychology, pedagogy and techniques of teaching of foreign literature. The main aim of these methods in the education process is to optimise the mastering of knowledge about literary characters as a defining component of a work of fiction. The efficiency of these methods is ensured by utilising the appropriate tasks that help to form different types of proficiency at all stages of learning the work of fiction; analysing the societal, historical, cultural, national and individual aspects of literary characters based on structural anthropology; applying elements of modern technologies of teaching in a dialogue-driven, communicative environment. Implementing these technologies enables a substantiated interpretation of creative fiction by pupils, facilitates their individual development, helps them to understand cross-art and cross-curricular connections and motivates them, as pupils-readers, to develop their own worldview and integrate into society.
During development of these methods, the context of following definitions was refined: “conceptual, substantive and procedural components of methods of teaching literary characters”, “competence-oriented learning tasks to facilitate formation of proficiency in analysing and interpreting literary characters”. Theoretical concepts of competence-, activity- and individual-oriented and reader-centric approaches to teaching literary characters were defined. Introduction of technology at different stages of teaching literary characters was proposed, including elements of methods of critical thinking development, as well as individual-oriented, integrative, problem-, research- and project-based technologies and interactive teaching). A complex of effective methods, techniques, types and forms of organisation of educational activity in pupils was developed. Different levels of knowledge formation, capabilities and skills of pupils concerning analysis and interpretation of literary characters were determined, as well as the criteria and indicators for their measurement. Results of experimental trial teaching have confirmed the effectiveness of proposed methods.
Key words: high school, foreign literature, literary character, educational technology, anthropological character model, teaching tasks for formation of different types of skills.
