Keyword: «foreign language acquisition»

The article is devoted to the actual problem of media resources application for improving the process of student foreign language linguistic competence development in a humanities university. The author examines types and didactic potential of media resources, principles of their use in teaching a foreign lan-guage, the role and place of a teacher in the educational process based on media resources application, offers some methodological techniques for their application to achieve the set learning goals. The article concludes that media resources make it possible to optimize the process of foreign language acquisition if a number of conditions are met.

The application of Stephen Krashen's theory of comprehensible input in the design of short-term courses of a foreign language for special purposes has become especially relevant due to the insufficient number of foreign language classroom hours in many non-linguistic universities. The aim of the study is to develop a model of organizing the process of learning a foreign language for special purposes in a non-linguistic university, based on a natural method of learning using comprehensible materials. Such a model could serve as an effective alternative to the traditional Soviet one, which has been largely preserved by many universities and does not correspond to the modern conditions and is primarily focused on acquiring certain skills. The author proposes a longitudinal and intermittent acquisition of a foreign language within a series of specialized courses following the study of relevant material in the native language within major disciplines. It is argued that learning the language of professional communication intermittently in senior years has several advantages over the traditional approach, because the teacher can rely on students' background ideas about future professional agency, knowledge of many international terms in their native language and higher professional motivation. The texts, corresponding in their content to the topics already covered in the native language, have all the necessary prerequisites of comprehensible input, because their logic and many concepts are a priori known to the students and they are of strictly professional interest. Stephen Krashen's approach, with its emphasis on the acquisition of the language information rather than on active speech activity or theoretical study of language norms, makes it possible to effectively introduce professional terminology to the students within a narrow timeframe. The results of the study, which require further testing, can be subsequently used to reform the process of learning a foreign language for special purposes in a non-linguistic university to meet the challenges facing the modern higher education in the context, when the goals and objectives of learning a foreign language remain unchanged and the classroom hours are often reduced. However, the implementation of this model is impossible without information support of a foreign language teacher by major disciplines specialists and the whole professional community of the university.

The article deals with the problem of learning, improving and maintaining a high level of foreign language proficiency by adults who have completed formal general and vocational education in appropriate educational institutions in the process of informal foreign language acquisition in the context of life-long education. The authors provide an analytical review of previously published scientific papers on the topic, present the results obtained in the course of empirical part of the research work, thus confirming high didactic potential of informal foreign language learning, as well as possibility of achieving the highest level of language proficiency provided that self-organized informal education is combined with formal and nonformal forms of educational activity while being at school and university, which lays the foundation for further self-study in the field of foreign language acquisition in the long term.