Journal archive

Abstract: The article deals with an actively debated issue of the role and place of modern literature in the reading activity of a senior secondary school student. Should we include it in the school curriculum, or should it be an extracurricular activity performed by students in their free time? If we choose to study it in classroom, how can we include works of modern authors in the real school curriculum? The analysis of research works devoted to the formation of the reading scope of senior schoolchildren shows that, on the one hand, modern teenagers display inadequate knowledge of contemporary literature and poor ability to orient in this realm, and, on the other hand, they express a desire to go beyond the school course of literature (Russian classics) and to read books written by contemporary authors. The need for high quality contemporary literature comes from intelligent and creatively thinking schoolchildren, and the teacher is to meet these demands. Short prose by contemporary authors suitable for senior secondary school students can be suggested for home reading and classroom study. The article outlines possible scenarios of discussion of short stories by D. Novikov (“A Fly in Amber” and “The Truth of the Water”), E. Vodolazkin (“A Completely Different Time”), and M. Shishkin (“The Rumbling Ceased…”). These short stories are accessible to teenagers as the narration focuses on the characters’ (or author’s) childhood or youth. The works of these authors are written in the traditions of the Russian classics (the article gives a detailed description of Bunin’s themes and motives in the prose by Novikov and Vodolazkin and Pasternak’s pretexts in the short story by Shishkin) – and this makes it possible to discuss the syllabus literary material to demonstrate various multilevel relations between texts of different epochs and to bridge the gap between “classics” and “contemporaries” in the minds of senior secondary school students.