REGIONAL LITERATURE AS A FACTOR OF FUTURE SPECIALISTS’ READING CULTURE DEVELOPMENT: PERSONALISTIC ASPECT.

Pedagogical Faculty of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University (PNU), the Faculty of Humanities of Mukachevo State University (MSU), and the Medical Faculty of Ternopil I. Horbachevskyi State Medical University (TSMU) within a four-year period (2013-2018) became a space for an intense research into intransient educative potential of arts and literature aiming to prove regional fiction power to nurture modern students spiritually and culturally competent despite their obvious alienation from reading. Methods used in the experimental study allowed organizing and compiling works of the Precarpathian, Transcarpathian, and Ternopil regions writers and ethnographers in order to make literature fully accessible for the students. In these literary enriched surroundings via empirical methods (surveys, conversations, interviews, and observations) the place of regional literature and other arts in the system of students’ requests, their role in the general cultural development of the individual were estimated. The results of the pilot study formative stage proved the rise of students with a high level of reading culture from 24% at the beginning of the experiment to 32%; of those with an average level who read sporadically and are able to recall the names from seven to ten Precarpathian writers and their works, two-three famous native ethnographers and their works, and those who occasionally read the “news” went up to 41% against 28% at the beginning of the experiment. At the same time, the number of students with a low level of reading culture went down to 27% as compared to 48% at the beginning of the experiment. No bibliophobes have been revealed. Similar methods and activities began to be implemented at MSU and TSMU. This work is ongoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]