POETRY AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING FUTURE TEACHERS-PHILOLOGISTS’ SPEAKING SKILLS

Nowadays teaching foreign languages to students is aimed at their mastering of intercultural communication in standard situations on the basis of communicative minimum including certain knowledge of linguistic and cultural studies. Proper attention should be paid to the selection of teaching material: it must be authentic, in our case – authen- tic poetry. The paper aims to describe the ways of improving students' practical readiness for oral communication, elicit potential of poetic texts and consider them as a means of enriching students' vocabulary based on reading and analysis. It will allow future foreign language teachers to improve their proficiency, prepare themselves for tolerant attitude towards other cultures and nations as well as comparing them with the specific character of their own culture, critical reflection of it and the system of personal values. Advancement of teaching English vocabulary is implemented through interactive teaching reading and understanding authentic poetry through the system of individual tasks. The latter are aimed at stimulation of reading authentic poetry by students, development of their abilities and skills of inde- pendent work on these tasks, raising the level of mastering foreign language vocabulary. Work with poetry may be used efficiently for the development of students' creative thinking as motivation for enrichment vocabulary with culture- specific words and for the development of spontaneous speech.