Principles of analyzing literary texts as foreign language teaching materials

Introduction. The paper concerns the problem of supervising integrated bachelor theses, based on literary texts as materials for teaching a foreign language. The aim of the paper is to frame the principles of conducting integrated graduate research work which is to display professional and subject-specific competencies, acquired by graduate students during the course of study. Materials and Methods. The research is based on the following methods: observation; analysis and synthesis, employed to correlate literary, linguistic and teaching approaches to works of fiction and to systematize personal professional experience of teaching English and literature and supervising graduation theses on these topics; and modeling, aimed at building the algorithm of integrated graduate research work. Results. The paper describes the algorithm of testing an authentic fictional text in order to determine its educational potential in teaching a foreign language. The educational potential of a text is revealed by means of analyzing specific text features on extralinguistic, content, structural and language levels and matching these features with reading exercises, activities and tasks they predetermine. Conclusions. The proposed research work algorithm, based on a complex approach to a fictional text as a source of linguistic, literary, socio-cultural, and historical information, can be effectively used to design teaching materials and to enhance the competencies acquired by bachelor students, majoring in teaching a foreign language.