Keyword: «informal learning»

The article is devoted to the problem of the possibility of using the informal study of a foreign language as extracurricular learning of university students. The paper provides a detailed review of the published works on the topic of the study, examines various approaches to the definition of the concept of “informal learning” and its characteristic features; it also reveals the peculiar properties of the informal study of a foreign language in the context of a humanitarian university; the conditions under which the informal study of a foreign language can become a full-fledged part of the formal education of university students and act as an indirectly and directly controlled extracurricular learning of the discipline are determined.

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.