On the Issue of Applicants for Higher Education’s Training for Linguistic Self-Education in Modern Pedagogical Theory and Practice

Abstract

The article substantiates that in modern conditions the core didactic principle of higher education should be the transition from teaching to self-education, which is regarded by contemporary native researchers as the highest stage of education. Social trends in the world have, in their turn, actualized the need to revise the conceptual system of views on the theory and practice of language self-instruction. The result of expanding the range of research issues of training students for independent acquisition of foreign language knowledge, as a kind of alternative to institutional education, was the introduction into scientific circulation of new categories, concepts and terms.
 Along with theoretical developments, the practice of linguistic self-education is being actively improved. New and already known methods of independent mastering foreign languages are emerging. It is typical of foreign higher education that productive self-educational activities increasingly permeate all the basic elements of the educational process and become its defining feature. In particular, special courses on linguistic autodidactics are introduced in higher educational establishments, the so-called “independent study” becomes widespread, students develop their own individual curriculum, which is carried out through the student’s free organization of his/her educational process and so on. Thus, a new dimension in teaching foreign languages has been introduced into existing educational technologies, namely: “learning to learn”, which meets the recommendations of the Council of Europe.
 Up to date the fundamental scientific and theoretical base, which covers important aspects of theory and practice of foreign language self-education, has been formed in native pedagogical science. Contemporary researchers recognize the training of future professionals for lifelong learning as one of the main factors of implementing the latest paradigm of higher education. With that self-education in the field of foreign languages is considered as the basic factor of forming the secondary language personality. It is particularly important to work out methodological support and appropriate technologies of “learning to learn”, aimed at equipping students with necessary skills of foreign language self-education. Researchers also comprehensively study the peculiarities of the organization and modern methods of autonomous mastering foreign languages.