Application of andragogy principles in teaching foreign language (using English as the example)

Abstract

Developing methods and ways of teaching for adult learners is one of the main tasks in modern higher educational institutions and extended educational systems, because a specialist of the modern progressive society must be not only a professional in his field and possess a number of skills and abilities necessary for work, but be proficient in one or more foreign languages. However, in our
experience many specialists neither speak a foreign language at all, nor know it at a high enough level to run professional operations in a foreign language, whether it is negotiating or writing a business letter. For this reason, this article analyses the works of many scientists studying the problems of andragogy, a
science dealing with the specificities of adult education. Not only main negative psychological factors, interfering the effectiveness of foreign language learning by
adults, are identified but also positive ones, among which there is a high degree of motivation and the ability to independently control their learning process, evaluate learning results. A teacher plays an important role in a learning process, whose main task is to plan a course so that adult learners can achieve by the end their goals and can apply their knowledge in practice. Therefore, various
communicative methods in teaching adult learners are used to develop speaking,
reading, listening and writing skills, as well as to form a number of competencies
necessary for professional activities and process of communication in a foreign
language. The main objective of this article is to find the effective ways, methods
and strategies in teaching adult learners. The relevance of the study is explained
by the need of specialists with a foreign language knowledge in the modern labor
market; hence, a language learning by adults is highly demanded.