Improving teaching methods in universities through the use of visual materials

Introduction. Using the method of structuring educational material through graphic visualization allows you to see how fragments of information in the text are interconnected. For this purpose, graphic organizers such as story maps, Venn diagrams, story maps, and others are most often used. The mechanism of their teaching is based on condensing information into an outline, which allows students to actively absorb and process information, teaches mental analysis, and develops the ability to organize and structure any material.

When compiling or filling out a text diagram, there is no automatic memorization or rote learning of the test, but associative thinking and various memory mechanisms are engaged. This approach not only promotes the development of communication skills, but also helps to develop the ability to critically perceive information and increases motivation to learn.

Aim and objectives of the study. The main functions of language are both communication and cognition, which gives reason to understand a person's communicative competence as knowledge, ideas about language, and the ability to perform speech acts and skills in the speech sphere. Gez defines communicative competence “as the ability to use language correctly in various socially conditioned situations and includes the ability to correlate speech with the goals of the communicative situation, with an understanding of the relationships between the communicating parties, as well as the ability to correctly organize speech communication, taking into account the cultural and social norms of communicative behavior” [1]. Professor I.A. Zimnyaya, analyzing communicative competence from the point of view of communication psychology, defines this ability as “the ability of a subject to carry out speech activity, realizing speech behavior that is adequate to the goals, means, and methods, various tasks, and situations of communication” [2].

According to applied linguistics, psychological, and cognitive research, linguistic knowledge in a specific area of professional communication should be acquired by students through the use of mental/cognitive schemas specially developed by linguists and psychologists, taking into account the characteristics of new information perception.

Among modern cognitive-oriented methods of teaching language for specific purposes in higher education that increase motivation to learn, we consider mental maps, knowledge maps, mind maps, intelligence maps, story mapping, etc."

The essence of cognitive mapping lies in identifying the concepts that form the informational basis of a text and establishing causal relationships between them [3]. In practice, this is nothing more than a schematic representation of an idea or concept that allows you to capture the main points of a topic using a minimum of verbal means and actively visualized images, thus presenting information in a compact form.

Cognitive mapping, or story mapping, is an extremely useful and effective technology for presenting and recording content specifically for reading, as the non-linear format allows students to view their notes in their entirety and place new information in the right place or establish logical connections between ideas. This makes the method an alternative to the usual linear or text-based note-taking method, while being based on the principle of simultaneous activation of the areas of the brain responsible for processing verbal and visual information.

The results of the study and their discussion. Today, in the context of the information society, constantly changing technologies, and labor market demands, it is becoming extremely important to foster in students the need for continuous self-development, increased motivation, and selflearning skills, which will ensure their social mobility and self-realization in the future.

Graphical representation of thought processes allows students to:

• •    activate their understanding of what they have read at different levels of knowledge and ability;

• •    organize and direct their thought processes;

• •    evaluate and correct their learning activities;

• •    write texts, formulate conclusions, and make reasoned statements in discussions.

Visual organizers can be divided into inductive and deductive, depending on the method used to achieve the goal. The former help to sort and systematize information and draw conclusions from the specific to the general. The latter allow you to apply rules and find solutions, moving from the general to the specific. Inductive graphic organizers include:

• •    Timelines, which help arrange events in chronological order and determine the causes and consequences of events and phenomena.

• •    Network diagrams, which connect related events into a single idea or concept.

• •    Information grids, maps, and graphs that help you calculate recurring events and draw conclusions.

• •    Venn diagrams designed to sort information into specific categories for comparison.

Examples of deductive methods include:

• •    Concept maps, used to systematize information and highlight the characteristic features of the phenomena or events being studied.

• •    Cause-and-effect chains, which allow us to understand and reproduce models of processes such as metamorphosis in biology, revolution in history, or the plot of a novel.

• •    Fishbone diagrams, whose purpose is to structure the process and identify the causes of a problem (hence their other name, cause-and-effect diagrams). Such diagrams allow us to analyze the causes of events and the connections between different parts of a problem.

• •    Cluster, which you can use to organize large amounts of information.

• •    Mind maps, which are a tool for displaying the thought process and structuring information in a visual form. They can be used effectively for “stenography” of thoughts that arise in the process of thinking about a task [4]. The process of extracting and comprehending information while reading is most effective when the text is structured correctly, for which there are special reading strategies, but the strategy is chosen for the specific logical and semantic structure of the text (frame).

Today, researchers identify six text frames, each of which involves the use of specific graphic organizers:

• 1.    Cause/effect.

• 2.    Concept/definition (concept and its definition).

• 3.    Problem/solution (problem and its solution).

• 4.    Compare/contrast.

• 5.    Proposal/support (judgment and its argumentation).

• 6.    Goal/action/result (goal-action-result) [5].

To determine the frame, it is necessary to understand what the text focuses on and what the meaning of its textual content is.

Conclusions: Each type of logical and semantic structure of a text essentially offers students the most effective strategy for working with specific material.

To achieve these goals, we use graphic text organizers that facilitate the organization and memorization of information.