For many years, experts in the field of education have sought to develop a perceptive and accessible theory that, on the one hand, would help teachers to effectively and systematically develop writing/reading skills in English in their students, and on the other hand, promote the correct setting of educational objectives in the course of English training. The most famous model describing and combining both the process of developing skills and setting effective goals of education is the Bloom's taxonomy, which includes six thinking skills, or educational learning objectives, from the most basic level to the most advanced one.

Taxonomy (from Ancient Greek `taxis' - arrangement, order and `nomos' - the law or science) is the theory of classification and systematization of organized areas of reality, usually having a hierarchical structure (organic world, objects of geography, geology, linguistics, ethnography, etc.) [7]. The notion of “taxonomy" was introduced for the first time in 1813 by the Swiss botanist Augustin de Candolle who worked at the classification system of plants. In the area of education, taxonomy is the structure of a comprehensible system of educational objectives, within which their categories and consecutive levels are singled out [8, 145].

Some domestic scientists dealt with the correct setting of educational teaching objectives and developing the skills of writing/reading skills in English. Thus, S. Arkhanhelskyi believes that the educational process in higher education is not only a scheme of communication and accumulation of knowledge, or skills and abilities training, but it is also a complex system of organizing, managing and developing cognitive activity of students, this is the process of comprehensive development of a highly qualified specialist. Consequently, in modern higher education knowledge, abilities and skills are no longer the subject of educational activity, but they have become the means of professional activity [5]. In the study of S. Arkhanhelskyi, a characteristic of four different levels of knowledge acquisition is presented, that is, the perception and transformation of educational information [5]. In the interpretation of V. Bespalko, I. Lerner, and M. Skatkin, the levels of acquisition of scientific information are presented in the following sequence:

- identification, i. e. imitation;

- reproduction, i. e. memorization, the ability to apply the acquired information in practical activities;

- transformation that allows to orientate in a new situation and develop a modified program of actions based on the knowledge gained [11]. The discovered conditions and levels of mastering the educational material determine the concept of the contents of learning in higher education as a pedagogically substantiated, logically considered and reflected in the educational documentation scientific information about the material to be studied.

There is also a classification of educational objectives proposed by V. Teslenko. The author outlines the following steps of knowledge mastering:

Informational level, requiring a student to identify familiar information.

Reproductive level, the main operations of which are the reproduction of information and algorithmic transformations.

Basic level, requiring a student to understand the essential aspects of educational information, and know the general principles of algorithmic search.

Advanced level, requiring a student to convert algorithms into conditions, which differ from standard ones, and be able to conduct heuristic search.

Creative level, meaning that a student possesses skills of an independent critical evaluation of educational information, the ability to solve non-standard tasks, and knowledge of the elements of research [9].

B. Bloom believed that there are skills of low-level thinking (knowledge and understanding) and high-level thinking (application, analysis, evaluation, synthesis). Most of the thinking processes peculiar for learning activity correspond to the levels of knowledge and understanding that are the simplest in mental activity, and they are also the basis for high-level thinking skills. With each successive level, the cognitive skills become more sophisticated [2].

B. Bloom is not only the author of the first detailed scheme of levels of thinking, but also he invented a system which describes the objectives of the cognitive area and the criteria for evaluating the level of mental activity in the learning process. Within the frames of the educational technology B. Bloom created the first taxonomy of educational objectives in 1956. At that time B. Bloom and D. Krathwall divided the goals of education into three areas: cognitive (required mastering the contents of the subject), psychomotor (development of motor, neuromuscular activity) and affective (emotional-value area, attitude to the studied material).

The first taxonomy covers the cognitive domain and includes six categories of goals with the following division:

- knowledge (specific material, terminology, facts, definitions, criteria, etc.);

- comprehension (explanation, interpretation, extrapolation);

- application (apply abstractions, general principles, or methods to specific concrete situations);

- analysis (separation of a complex idea into its constituent parts and understanding of organization and relationship between the parts. It includes realizing the distinction between hypothesis and fact as well as between relevant and extraneous variables);

- synthesis (creative, mental construction of ideas and concepts from multiple sources to form complex ideas into a new, integrated, and meaningful pattern subject to given constraints);

- evaluation (to make a judgment of ideas or methods using external evidence or self-selected criteria substantiated by observations or informed rationalizations) [1].

The main advantage of Bloom's taxonomy is that thinking is presented there in a structured and accessible form suitable for practitioners. Despite the fact it was developed more than 40 years ago, it still remains one of the most popular systematization of educational objectives among scientists as well as practical teachers. Moreover, it can be practically applied in the process of higher education and particularly in the area of training academic writing/reading skills in English. It is the most comprehensive system and covers various areas of students' learning activities: cognitive (cognitive domain), affective (affective domain), psycho-motor (psycho-motor domain). Bloom's taxonomy is based on the following four principles:

- practical orientation: taxonomy should reflect the theory of goal-setting, and also be an effective instrument for teachers-practitioners;

- psychological: taxonomy should be based on modern achievements of psychological science;

- logical: taxonomy should be logically completed and possess internal harmony;

- objectivity: the hierarchy of goals does not mean the hierarchy of their importance.

The cognitive field of taxonomy includes six levels given above; each of them contains the system of its own goals. Thus, the level of knowledge involves the development of learning goals aimed at memorizing, recognizing and reproducing the basic elements of educational information in the area of English language. The goals of this level involve the development of knowledge in the following three categories:

- specific knowledge (for example, dates, facts, numbers, terms, names);

- procedural knowledge (for example, criteria, directions, categories, classes);

- abstract knowledge (for example, principles, axioms, theorems, generalizations, theories, structures).

The level of comprehension includes educational objectives of three categories:

- translation (for example, the ability to translate a task from English into Ukrainian);

- interpretation (for example, the ability to explain the obtained solution in the certain language);

- extrapolation (for example, the ability to use the acquired knowledge in a similar situation).

The level of application implies the development of practical skills of students to use particular knowledge in practical situations. It can also be represented by the following corresponding sublevels:

- application of concepts;

- application of methods, algorithms;

- application of theories.

The level of analysis contains educational objectives in the following categories:

- analysis of elements (separation, division of the whole into parts);

- analysis of relations (establishing links between elements);

- analysis of principles (systematization of elements).

The level of synthesis, which includes the learning

objectives for developing skills to compile the whole from individual parts, consists of the following categories:

- synthesis of ideas (for example, the search for an idea of solving a problem);

- synthesis of the procedure (for example, the development of a plan, the sequence of operations to solve a problem);

- synthesis of structure (for example, the construction of a function, set, group).

The evaluation level, which involves the availability of diagnostic skills and the development of critical thinking, includes the following categories:

- evaluation based on internal knowledge and beliefs (reasoning, logic, constructiveness);

- evaluation based on external criteria (standards, rules, norms).

This analysis increases the awareness of the teacher's actions towards the student, since it allows to organize the activity at different levels of mental operations and arrange learning process to develop academic writing/reading skills in English. In addition, conscious and consistent development of cognitive skills increases the efficiency of learning activity in the field of studying English, and generalization of the results and the discussion of errors committed, taking into account the analysis of mental operations, are necessary so that students could possibly correct their understanding of their actions, which is also a learning experience.

Along with the benefits, Bloom's taxonomy has certain disadvantages. Thus, in taxonomy that classifies learning objectives in the cognitive domain, the cognitive structure itself is not clearly visible at the level of perception, memory, thinking, intuition, and other mental processes. There is also some repetition of categories at various levels of learning objectives; for example, the category of extrapolation at the level of comprehension is largely corresponding to the category of application of concepts. The “application-analysis-synthesis" link has not been sufficiently developed from the point of view of their hierarchy. In this regard, G. Madaus and his colleagues proposed their own taxonomy modification, which unlike the strictly consistent Bloom's taxonomy is more flexible and bendy classification that eliminates the contradiction in the “application-analysis-synthesis" link [3, 253-262].

Bloom's taxonomy has also been repeatedly criticized by domestic scientists, because it confused particular learning outcomes (knowledge, comprehension, application) with mental operations, which are required to achieve those outcomes (analysis, synthesis, evaluation). The basis of the domestic developments is a tiered systemic approach which describes the achievements of students in the subject studied (English), and makes it possible to group the results of training depending on the levels of educational activities.

According to A. Mayorov, nowadays there are no domestic scientific developments in the field of education which allow not only to evaluate the level of development of students' academic writing/reading skills in English, but also to effectively set educational objectives in this area. This aspect presents the following difficulties:

- suggested levels of comprehension of educational material should be indisputably taken for granted by the pedagogical community;

- they should achieve a mutual correspondence between the difficulty of a particular task and the level of comprehension of the dominant content element presented;

- it is difficult to acquire a complete correlation between all possible knowledge and methods of activity [10].

The research of a more accurate and sufficient basic concept of the taxonomy of thinking skills was subsequently carried out by several cognitive psychologists. In the development of his taxonomy of educational learning goals, R. Marzano reveals one weak point of Bloom's taxonomy. The very structure of the taxonomy, built on the progress from the simplest level of knowledge to the advanced level of evaluation, is not supported by researches. Hierarchical taxonomy implies that each skill of a higher level is based on previous skills; that is, comprehension requires knowledge, application requires comprehension and knowledge and so on. This position of Bloom's taxonomy, according to R. Marzano, is simply incorrect [4].

Conclusions