Особливості конструювання знань в аспекті когнітивної парадигми

The article focuses on the problem of developing students’ knowledge space in the process of foreign language acquisition. The purpose of this article is to highlight specificity of knowledge formation in an intellectual activity of cognizing subjects. To reach the purpose set the following concrete tasks are to be fulfilled: to characterize knowledge space within cognitive framework, to study the principles, ways and stages of its development, to reveal and specify the basic processes conducive for its formation. The investigation of the problem under study let the author arrive at the conclusion that as part of an individual’s conceptual system knowledge space is viewed as a result of a cognitive activity of a person. In this process he learns to process, categorize, conceptualize and generalize events, make inferences, memorize a great deal of information and express the results of such activity via language. This cognitive activity leads to formation of general notions in a person’s mind. Integrated together they subsequently form knowledge space. It is considered to be a corpus of structured knowledge units – frames, scripts, schemata, plans, etc. – which are interrelated and connected to support the functioning of the cognitive system of a person. Knowledge space is claimed to be constructed primarily due to the processes of categorization and conceptualization, and its building elements presumably are concepts, represented by various cognitive structures. They may be considered “the constructive mental blocks” of the conceptual representation of the world, or knowledge space of a personality.