Studying the language ability and speech competence of secondary school students

The article is devoted to the problem of describing the regional linguistic consciousness of the Russian language native speakers. At present linguistic consciousness of the native speakers is being studied through analyzing their speech activity products. Text is considered to be one of such products and serves as the material for profound research of such linguistic consciousness components as language ability and speech competence. Compositions written by students of the 6th and 10-11th forms of one of Krasnoyarsk schools were used as research material for the analysis. When analyzing the material, we paid essential attention to the quantitative and subject content of the written speech product (according to N. I. Zhinkin). The purpose was to identify the specific features of the language ability and speech competence development of the secondary school students through analyzing the quantitative and subject content of their compositions. The study was carried out through discourse assessment of the texts collected for the experiment when the school students had to write a composition choosing one of the suggested topics. The analysis showed that the language ability and speech competence changed and developed within the quantitative aspect, as well as within the qualitative one. The number of words and sentences increased in senior forms, there was a significant tendency of using more complicated syntactical structures, resorting to analysis, synthesis, expressing assessment and judgment. The students of senior forms use the lexis of various stylistic levels, including the official language words, and express their intentions in a more logic way while using linguistic means.