Abstract:

This paper is aimed at the investigation into teaching materials, mostly innovative and their effectiveness in the development of a foreign language comprehension, or reading comprehension skills in the process of foreign language teaching. To support the comprehension, the teaching process is perceived as a crucial part as it not only facilitates when working with teaching materials but also when processing and perceiving foreign language data. The aim of this study is to find out what impact innovative materials have on developing comprehension of foreign language texts. The methodological part is firstly focused on the students’ attitudes and reflections towards development of comprehension of foreign language texts applying commonly-used teaching materials in teaching processes (Opportunities, Project). Subsequently, an experiment using innovative teaching materials (Life, Straightforward) is presented. The experiment consisted of 158 respondents, involving five classes of grammar school students, three groups of students at a university in Kazakhstan and two groups of students at a university in Bratislava. Research methods used included “the reflections questionnaire” and “the reading comprehension attitude test”. The results showed that the development of comprehension of foreign language texts improved by over 50 % for all groups of respondents using innovative teaching materials, while a crucial role was represented by variables which we are going to discuss later in the paper.

Keywords:

Foreign language teaching, teaching material, innovative teaching material, comprehension, foreign language text, reading comprehension.