Peculiarities of Primary School Children Figurative Speech Comprehension

Provided by the present article analysis of modern psychological and pedagogical researches of comprehension issues allow to state that comprehension of figurative speech (metaphors and proverbs) by primary school children is a complex process requiring overall investigation, consideration of school children mental actions, their orientations towards significant connections and relations between objects and phenomena of the surrounding world. School children mental actions development necessary for metaphors and proverbs figurative meaning comprehension is possible only within the context of their learning activity. It has been singled out in the experimental research that within the context of traditional teaching, school children oral speech comprehension is focused on the features of the objects without their connections consideration; thus the comprehension is restricted to an image and direct contents of proverbs and metaphors. School children learning according to D.B. Elkonin-V.V. Davydov' programs, obtain the orientation towards the system-forming features of the objects that allows to generalize correctly the significant connections and understand the meaning of proverbs and metaphors. The school children orientation towards the significant connections and relations is determined by the components of learning activity: learning actions, control actions. The most sensitive indicator of school children oral speech comprehension is the evaluation of their own learning activity.