The article highlights the structural and functional approach in the process of teaching semantic reading, analyzes different aspects of the interaction of the author, the reader and the work, identifies ways to solve the problem of adequate perception of the author’s semantic world by the reader. As a tool that helps to penetrate into the meaning of the work, iconic modeling is considered in two varieties — figurative-semantic (verbal drawing) and logicalsemantic models (the technique of “binary oppositions”), which serves as the basis of meaning generation in the process of reading, the reader’s interpretation of the work. The proposed approach allows us to take a fresh look at the methodology of functional literacy formation in the context of the development of semantic reading skills of a literary text.