Reading for meaning skills development with the use of internet-jokes when studying a second foreign language (the case of German)

Global informatization of society creates objective difficulties of understanding, processing, interpretation and systematization of information. It pressures to search and develop innovative approaches to teaching. In modern educational conditions the problem of teaching the skills of reading for meaning as most important way to acquire knowledge is of particular importance. Second foreign language acquisition is complicated by some habits and algorithms of work with language material enshrined in process of studying of the “first" foreign language, and also underdeveloped skills of reading in a new, different language. The text material offered for development and fixing reading strategies is often a demotivating factor for the students. More specific approach to the organization of lessons and creative selection of material, in particular, using short humorous texts, can effective solve the problem of foreign language reading skills development. The authentic Internet-jokes of which there is an abundance on some entertaining sites on the Internet under vast topical categories can serve as ideal material for development and consolidation of basic and special reading skills. Topical and lexical and grammar criteria are especially important when selecting the jokes as the text should contain some specific sets of lexical units and the grammatical structures relevant to the training subject and the student's language level. Each and every joke offered in the lesson should be elaborated by the teacher in advance. The most effective working methods with the text are the tasks aimed at its reconstruction - graphical, lexical and grammar and semantic. The tasks are as follows: 1) dividing the text into words and sentences or only into sentences; 2) rearrangement of several lexical units or adding words to grasp the meaning; 3) reconstructing the punch line, 4) reconstructing the text - so called “C-Test”. Internet jokes are always expressive and also represent the accumulated linguocultural picture of the country of the target language, they perform a clear-cut communicative task and are aimed at giving pleasure, thus they don`t cause boredom, but they “force” students to read up the text to the end, to solve the point and guess the meaning, which activates their mental processes. Experimental findings reveal, that Internet-jokes both promote increase of reading literacy and develop linguistic competence, improve general learning skills, cognitive and communicative ability as well and last but not least they also significantly arouse students` motivation.