Keyword: «lifelong learning»

The paper is devoted to the topical issues of continuing education, prerequisites of its origin, essence and mechanisms of implementation. On the basis of a wide range of the primary sources the author finds out psychoeducational aspects of LLL (lifelong learning) concept, educational processes which are synonymous to the concept under discussion and governmental support mechanisms of its realization. Especial attention is paid to the continuous learning programmes in Great Britain and the ways they are carried out by the educational establishments of the country.

The paper touches upon the issue of professional communicative competence. Further education courses are limited in time which results in the necessity to focus on particular elements of professional communica-tive competence. The article suggests that discourse, strategic and self-study competences can be viewed as the key components of this competence.

The article deals with the concept of "information and communication competence" and its components in accordance with the European Digital Competence Framework. The experience of using information online resources in teaching a foreign language in a university is presented. Based on the survey of graduate students, the author presents the results of their information and communication competence formation level self-assessment.

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.