Keyword: «level of foreign language proficiency»

The article updates existing data on expediency of using the principle of differentiation of foreign language teaching in higher education. The aim of this article is to identify effectiveness of the principle of differentiation of the process of teaching a foreign language to students of non–linguistic specialties of a multidisciplinary university. Achieving the goal included the use of theoretical and empirical research methods such as pedagogical experiment, monitoring, testing, survey, statistical methods of data processing (Student's t-test for dependent samples). The experimental study took place within the framework of the discipline "Foreign language: Basic course, English" and consisted of several stages: 1) external differentiation of 1st year students into groups corresponding to a certain level of foreign language proficiency, based on data obtained at the diagnostic stage of the experiment; 2) at the practical stage – teaching students in level groups for 1 semester using auxiliary tools and teaching techniques, monitoring the level of foreign language proficiency; 3) the control stage included conducting final testing, a survey of the participants of the experiment and students who did not participate in the experiment; conducting the survey of teachers working in the level groups. The obtained results revealed positive dynamics in the level of foreign language proficiency among students of the differentiated groups, which led to alignment of the majority of respondents to the required level B1. Accordingly, it can be stated that differentiated instruction is an effective tool for leveling and improving the degree of foreign language proficiency. Despite its proven effectiveness in terms of the development of students' foreign language skills, differentiated instruction has a number of difficulties in organising, which is currently being studied by foreign scientists. It is presented in this article and has theoretical significance for future research. The survey of teachers who participated in the training of level groups showed that the application of this principle is effective only from the point of view of more comfortable interaction between the teacher and students, greater involvement of the students in the process of learning a foreign language, but does not have a special impact on academic success and involves a lot of work in the organisation. Thus, the results obtained have practical significance in terms of representativeness of the study conducted on a large sample, receiving feedback from the students and teachers, and availability of statistical data on experimental learning in relation to foreign language education, which can be used to conduct larger-scale research.