Development of non-formal and informal teaching of foreign languages in the 2010s

Flerov Oleg Vladislavovich PhD in Pedagogy Head of Academic Department, Institute of Economics and Industrial Management 105203 Russia, Moscow, 15th Parkovaya street, 8 olegflyoroff@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Informal and informational education in the life of a modern person: problem statement

Over the past decade, a change in the information environment has been actively observed, and by its completion it was finally fixed, the digitalization of which led to the full spatial and temporal availability of information resources of the widest spectrum (from specialized scientific to entertainment). In relation to the problems of digitalization of the social environment, quantitative and informational aspects are often mentioned today (an increase in information flows, an overabundance of information, the "depreciation" of information as a consequence of the latter, etc.). However, the fact that mobile digital devices that provide complete spatial and temporal information freedom have become available to everyone and have turned from very expensive and prestigious things into everyday functional tools of a modern person in ten years makes it possible to single out this freedom as the main qualitative change in the information space compared to the era of the 2000s - a decade, when digital network resources were already at a fairly high stage of development. In relation to educational topics in this problematic field, the most relevant, in our opinion, is the question of differentiation of information and knowledge. It is usually based on the understanding that the latter is a meaningful, personally accepted information, thanks to which real benefits are extracted in daily activities and (or) a person's worldview, his inner spiritual world, which determines the development of personality, is enriched. Indeed, today there is a situation that an extremely small percentage of information consumed by people turns into knowledge in the full sense of the word. This, in turn, actualizes the development of the ability to navigate information flows (what is commonly called information competence today), and it is becoming increasingly important not only in the framework of institutional activities (educational or professional), but also in everyday life. The understanding that recently we have been "in the world of knowledge" not only within traditional scientific and educational institutions (educational institutions, libraries, museums, cultural institutions, etc.), but also always and everywhere where there is a smartphone connected to the Internet, goes in unison with the approval of the ideas of continuous education of the individual as building an individual educational route taking into account not only professional, but also social, as well as ideological needs of a person throughout life. After the appearance of the Master's degree as the second stage of higher education, the variability of institutional academic trajectories has increased significantly, however, the number of basic educational programs that even a very academically oriented person masters is still limited to two or three. It is for this reason that cognitive activity outside the official institutional academic environment, namely informal and informational education, plays a huge role in the continuous education of the individual. At the same time, the transformation of the information environment noted above is an extremely fertile ground for the development of the designated types of educational activities.

Informal education is traditionally understood as an organized pedagogical process outside of official educational programs in traditional educational institutions (schools, colleges, universities, etc.). Thus, the main difference between non-formal education and formal education is that it is not subject to strict requirements of educational standards, and its receipt is not fixed by a state-issued document. Such education can include the activities of clubs, circles, training centers (additional education), training seminars, lectures, courses, trainings, corporate training, etc.. A common feature of informal and formal education is that they are a purposeful pedagogical process organized by persons engaged in professional pedagogical activity. In contrast, informal education is, as a rule, a process of obtaining knowledge, organized not by teachers, but by a person independently – that is, self-education, or not organized at all, that is, spontaneous acquisition of knowledge about the world in the process of daily life.

Such forms of education were actualized in an era when the volumes of accumulated information are increasing, and the variability of the world (technological, social, political, etc.) forces us to actualize knowledge about it more often, while the ideas of the importance of intellectual and personal development of a person throughout life have been axiomatic in pedagogy for quite a long time.

In this paper, we will consider the problems of the designated types of education in the specialized context of teaching foreign languages. In recent decades, a great deal has been said about the importance of language proficiency for all people without exception in the context of such global processes as intercultural communication, mutual integration, academic and professional mobility, etc. dominating today. On the basis of these postulates, many methodological innovations have been developed that should ensure the effective development of a foreign language by non-linguistic students within the framework of basic educational programs at all levels. Today, a foreign language is the only discipline in domestic education that is studied as non–core at all levels of training (school – college – bachelor's degree – master's degree – postgraduate) nevertheless, as before, many Russians assess their level as basic, which is confirmed, in particular, by the analysis of the resume; and the demand for electronic translation of simple texts clearly indicates that even good basic knowledge does not fully develop into foreign-language competencies.

So it seems that simply saturating the main educational programs and the institutional academic trajectory with hours in a foreign language is clearly not enough. Quantity in this case practically does not translate into quality. This happens, in our opinion, because even if we assume that the teaching methods in an educational institution ideally simulate a foreign language environment, immersion in the latter in any case occurs discretely – once or twice a week. This negates the effectiveness of even the most advanced methods of institutional training, since the overwhelming percentage of the time the student spends outside of class anyway. On the other hand, digital technologies have saturated the everyday environment of modern human existence with foreign language knowledge, and the use of the potential of this environment can become one of the main vectors of the development of language education in the digital era. Let us consider below the features of the modern information environment that affect the non-institutional development of foreign languages.

Social and communicative conditions and factors of the development of informal and informative learning of foreign languages

Under the conditions and factors indicated in the subtitle, we understand the totality of both quantitative and qualitative features of the information and language environment, as well as the actual foreign language knowledge, which influence the development of languages both from a cognitive and motivational point of view.

Speaking about the quantitative aspect, first of all, it should be noted that if in the digital era the volume of available information as potential knowledge is growing significantly, then the volume of foreign language knowledge is growing many times faster. Any information and knowledge is transmitted using language, therefore, any information on the Internet in a foreign language is foreign language knowledge. This is especially true for the English language, the share of digital resources in which exceeds half (data w3techs.com ). In this context, the main property of foreign language knowledge plays a role – its pointlessness. A foreign language by itself does not give a person new knowledge about the world, but serves as a means to obtain any knowledge. Of course, a large volume gives a good opportunity to choose foreign language information for mastering, which acts as a positive factor for cognitive interest – an axiomatic condition for successful educational activity.

The second feature of the modern information environment is that foreign language knowledge exists in it in parallel with Russian, which does not require any special planning from a modern person. Of course, even in the pre-digital era, especially in the post-Soviet period, there was no shortage of foreign-language sources, but to get a book in a foreign language, you had to go to a specialized library or store; to get a foreign newspaper, you had to go into the hotel lobby; to be able to watch foreign television, you had to install a satellite antenna. It is also obvious that these opportunities were available mainly to residents of large cities, while in small settlements the amount of available foreign language information was limited to a textbook. Today, foreign-language websites, portals, etc. exist in a single system with domestic ones, in order to obtain foreign-language information, a person does not need special planning, which makes this process spontaneous, that is, similar to the process of using his native language and mastering it. Spontaneity as the quality of the existence of foreign language knowledge in the digital era goes in unison with the understanding of information education as a non-systemic and specially uncontrolled process of knowledge acquisition.

Another feature of the foreign-language digital environment of the 2010s is that the language of "ordinary people" is increasingly represented and more accessible in it. So if before the student encountered textual works of an official nature, that is, representing artistic, scientific and journalistic styles, today the proportion of texts that are products of everyday speech activity (blogs, entries in electronic journals, user comments, etc.) written in colloquial everyday language is increasing. Previously, a significant communicative contradiction was that a person who mastered a foreign language academically experienced difficulties in everyday communication due to the discrepancy between the standardized and "real language". Saturation of the foreign-language digital environment with everyday language, which has occurred over the past decade, creates a condition for leveling this contradiction.

Another condition for the actualization of non-institutional language education is the cognitive specificity of foreign language knowledge, the presence of which requires constant foreign language practice to maintain relevant competencies at a high level. It is very common to hear "language is forgotten without practice", this phrase is not accurate in the literal sense, because we are talking about the fact that a person loses his "communicative form", and with it confidence due to the fact that rarely used language units move from active stock to passive. On the other hand, today foreign language proficiency is more and more often required in a practical and communicative context, that is, the loss of foreign language competencies makes language knowledge much less useful. For this reason, the tasks of modern language education, along with the development of languages, include the acquisition of foreign language practice to maintain foreign language competencies at the existing level, if a person has already mastered a foreign language, but for some reason does not have the opportunity to use it in institutional activities at a certain life span.  

This may even apply to professional linguists. Of course, a visit to an educational institution in order only to maintain a foreign language practice by a professional who speaks the language well is clearly an excessive measure, especially since traditionally the activities of educational institutions are focused on the formation and development of competencies, and not on maintaining practice. In this case, informal education is a necessary and sufficient way to solve the problem largely because a person who has already mastered the language (that is, who has significant and positive academic experience) does not need the support of a professional teacher to organize his own activities.

The indicated conditions follow from the informational specificity of the communicative environment and from the cognitive specificity of the actual foreign language knowledge. The last condition is purely social and consists in the fact that in the 21st century the understanding of the boundaries of youth has significantly shifted for reasons of both medical and technological and socio-ideological nature. So, for example, in 2020 in Russia it is proposed to legally consider people under 35 years of age as young people, WHO proposes to consider a young person under 45 years of age. This clearly contradicts the traditional scientific age periodizations developed in the first half of the 20th century, but probably the latter will sooner or later be subject to revision, because the designated boundaries in the future are likely to move only forward.

The shifting boundaries of youth obviously have a positive effect on people's motivation for education and self-development after mastering the basic educational programs, which, in most cases, ends by the age of 25. With regard to a foreign language, it should be said that this knowledge is equally relevant at any stage of life and age, because, as noted above, today the foreign-language and Russian-language information environment surround a person at the same time, starting to merge and, perhaps, even mix.

All this actualizes the scientific approach to the problems of non-institutional language education in modern information conditions.

Non-institutional development of foreign languages in domestic studies of the 2010s

Theoretical and pedagogical research in the field of non-formal and informal education goes back to the problems of continuing education of the individual and the influence of the non-institutional environment on its development. It should be noted that special attention in these works is paid to the interaction of formal and non-formal education as two different and dialectically interacting sources of human development. In relation to the development of foreign languages, these aspects will be considered by us in the last part of this work.

            The selection of sources for the analysis of the development of the problem was carried out by us on the basis of the elibrary and cyberleninka platforms, as well as using a number of other electronic resources accumulating texts of scientific publications, in particular university websites. Taking into account the subject of the article, the substantive bias of which implies an analysis of the current state of the phenomena under consideration, rather than a historical digression, we have limited our range of attention to studies published over the past decade.

            Among the first 100 scientific papers issued by relevance when querying for the relevant keywords on the platforms mentioned above, approximately 25% are devoted to non-institutional learning and mastering foreign languages as the main object of research, including articles on teaching Russian as a foreign language. In the rest, this problem is mentioned indirectly in the process of studying another object. These quantitative data indicate, in our opinion, that despite the general interest and recognition of the relevance of non-institutional pedagogical issues, the gap in specialized methodological research is currently only in the process of being filled.

            Among all the works with a ratio of approximately half to half, two groups are very clearly distinguished. The first examines the general features of non–formal and informal education and, in particular, language teaching as a social phenomenon (Gorbunova Yu.A., Ilakavichus M.R., Okereshko A.V., Roitblat O.V., Sidorov D.G., etc.); the second - specific methodological aspects and features of the introduction of non-institutional linguistic educational practices in the didactic system (Babaeva E.S., Dubrovina T.L., Liskina T.V., Paulzen N.S., Bludov V.V., Onoshko O.Yu., Dubakov A.V., Lyalin D.V., Shalabodova V.I., etc.). In general, taking into account the varying degrees of relevance, we can talk about the presence of more than 50 works (including dissertations) on each of the designated areas in the open scientific and publication space of the 2010s.

Among the dissertation and monographic studies of the last decade on the problems of this kind of education, the works of E.S. Babaeva, T.L. Dubrovina, M.R. Ilakavicius, A.V. Okereshko, O.V. Roitblat, D.G. Sidorov should be noted ^[1-7].

In the context of teaching foreign languages, research in this area is more scientific and methodological than fundamental. On the other hand, their analysis showed that, in terms of general didactic aspects, they are completely based on the postulates of the works mentioned above, while the analysis of the possibilities of applying these postulates through the prism of the specifics of the foreign language environment, foreign language knowledge and the role of foreign language education in the development of personality as a whole is new in them.

T.V. Liskina and N.S. Paulsen in their work systematize the sources of informal education in the context of the development of foreign languages by students. After analyzing a number of methodological works within the competence approach, the authors come to the conclusion that the main sources today include watching movies, TV series, listening to songs, reading books and magazines, computer games and applications, virtual networks and Internet resources, commercials and ads, sales and order sites, communication with foreigners. At the same time, according to the authors, each source has the potential to implement techniques and strategies for the development of both general educational and special actions, also systematized in this study ^[8]

T.V. Liskina., V.V. Bludov and O.Yu. Onoshko come to the conclusion that the forms of control and types of motivation in the process of formal education correspond to three types of targeting of students for self-learning in the conditions of informal education of learning: open, indirect and hidden targeting. According to the authors, "open, explicit targeting occurs through such a formulation of educational tasks and setting their goals that students themselves see the need for independent work and search for additional information in informational sources and turn to them to complete tasks..... Indirect targeting is an intermediate type and is based on both open and hidden motives of activity. Such targeting can occur, for example, due to a problem situation or a task formulated in the form of a question to which the student must find an answer..... The third highlighted type, hidden targeting, occurs due to the orientation of students not to the form of work, but to the final result, to the very process of preparing an answer to this task" ^[9].

A.A. Kolesnikov identifies the following competencies, the development of which is most involved in the process of informal foreign language teaching. Regulatory (metacognitive) competence, consisting in the ability to formulate tasks related to the use of language in everyday life, including as a means of acquaintance with professional activity; to determine the timing and strategy of achieving results, to carry out an independent search for educational resources; to use different types of analysis when discovering an interesting language product; social and communicative competence, consisting in ability to actively search for contacts and interact regularly (including using Internet resources) with students, teachers of Russian and foreign universities, international specialists in order to discuss the possibilities of obtaining additional professional education, internships, practices and employment; subject (foreign language) competence, consisting of the ability to find examples of the implementation of professional and communicative activities by characters of works of art or movie characters; analyze their professional and personal qualities; put yourself in the place of heroes and think over their communicative behavior; analyze the described situations of interaction, noting for themselves the most successful communicative techniques, compare the features of situations in the contexts of native and foreign cultures, record their observations in a foreign language ^[10].

K.I. Baymukhametova sees in informational language education, namely in independent work on learning a foreign language, an additional source of linguistic culture formation.  This, according to the author, is based on an integrative-acmeological approach, "synthesizing subject-activity, competence, cultural, synergetic and systemic approaches" ^{[11, p. 75]}

A.V. Dubakov, D.V. Lyalin, V.I. Shalabodova note that "as the advantages of non-formal foreign language teaching, it is advisable to highlight the following: the possibility of introducing and broadcasting language material in an unusual, original form; great opportunities in creating a developing pedagogically comfortable environment; the destruction of communication barriers; focus on more intensive formation of foreign language communication skills. At the same time, it should be noted that informal foreign language teaching has a number of disadvantages. First of all, the constant use of informal means can sufficiently reduce learning outcomes. Students will perceive the informal process with less seriousness, therefore, they will not pay due attention to preparing for classes. Constant formal control also motivates students to achieve results, permanent work. Within the framework of informal training, this control may be weakened" ^{[12, p. 154]}. The identification of these shortcomings allowed the authors to conclude that the need to maintain a balance between informal and formal learning and their rational integration into the learning process can improve its results in many ways.

V.N. Kontsevaya notes that the main disadvantage of informal learning is that "the student does not always set a specific goal and, as a result, does not always get a specific result – it is difficult to assess the progress and dynamics of learning" ^{[13, p. 173]}

The interaction of formal and non-formal education is indeed one of the most clearly observed dialectical processes in pedagogy of the 2010s. This and other related trends in the development of foreign languages will be discussed in the final part of our work.

The main trends and contradictions of the development of non-institutional language education in the 2010s

First, it is necessary to make a small clarification regarding the term "non-institutional" in the context of teaching foreign languages, which has already been repeatedly used in this work to combine the concepts of informal and informational language education. If the latter, in essence, almost always takes place outside educational institutions, then non-formal education can take place in their environment, for example, additional education (courses, trainings, seminars, lectures, master classes and other similar forms) organized at universities and other educational institutions. Speaking about non-institutionality, in this context we understand non-institutionality not physical, but conceptual, that is, in fact, non-standardization as an alternative to learning within the framework of basic educational programs in accordance with standards that became much more demanding in the 2010s. So the term "non-institutional" for combining the educational practices described in this paper seems convenient, if only because the absolute majority of them take place really outside educational institutions.

As already noted, the main source and resource for the non-institutional development of foreign languages is the digital network information environment. Taking into account the fact that it penetrates into all spheres of society, one of the main trends and features of the development of such language acquisition has become the penetration of its elements into institutional practice.  Previously, it was quite natural for a person who wanted to engage in self-education to buy a textbook published at a well-known university with the understanding that he receives the same "product", but only without entering into institutional educational interactions. The reverse situation was completely different: in the 2000s, in the educational environment, the phrase "this is taken from the Internet" often meant "this is low-grade material"; although both then and now, both on the Web and on the pages of officially published educational products, there were and there are materials of both high and low content-informational content. qualities. During the 2010s, the attitude to information from the "external" digital environment in educational institutions has changed significantly. Today, when organizing independent work of students, it is understood a priori that they will take a significant part of the information from the Internet, foreign language teachers themselves actively use texts from the Network as authentic language materials, the significance of which has long been considered axiomatic; while "unofficial" language works, including materials from blogs, chats, messengers, podcasts, etc. have recently become the subject of scientific and methodological research regarding the possibility of their introduction, along with journalistic and scientific texts, into the educational process of educational institutions. Among the most recent works of this kind, articles by such authors as Azizova S.M., Aksenova I.N., Goltsova T.A., Grubin I.V., Efanova L.D., Zonova M.V., Ilchinskaya V.V., Mammadova N.R., Plekhanova Yu.V., Semina V.V. can be distinguished ^[14-23]. The methodological bias in the research of the 2010s in this problem field is noted by E.M. Soltovets ^[24]. Having analyzed the array of scientific works on informational education, the author comes to the conclusion that, judging by the content of the annotations of most of the above works, pedagogical theory in the classical sense of this meaning worries the authors less than practical and applied issues. Excursions into the history of education and references to informal learning as preparation for life are more typical of works written before the mid-2000s.

Working under the guidance of a teacher with such language materials ensures the formation of the skill of selection and meaningful evaluation of the latter for self-education. This skill as a component of information competence is key in the process of passing the post-university trajectory of continuing education of a person.

From the above-mentioned trend of integration of non-institutional didactic elements into the institutional educational system, there follows a tendency for the growth of scientific and methodological interest in the former. If in the 2000s it was mainly an initiative of individual teachers based on innovative enthusiasm, now we can talk about a stable and sustained interest of the scientific and pedagogical community in the issues we are investigating. The studies given in the review above make up only a small part of the publications on the elibrary platform. The growth of professional and scientific interest in non-formal and informal education in the digital environment is caused not only by the final penetration of the latter into the institutional educational system and digitalization of many elements of the pedagogical process, but also by the personnel factor. By the beginning of the 2020s, a generation of scientific and pedagogical workers had passed professional formation, who received education in the conditions of the development of the digital environment (the second half of the 2000s). So for those who are now stepping over the threshold of a young scientist (35 years old), the use of the resources of a foreign language digital space when receiving education is the norm corresponding to their own academic experience (and positive and successful experience, if we are talking about people who want to work at universities and other scientific and educational organizations), not to mention modern a generation of graduate students and undergraduates who barely remember the pre-digital world.

The opposite trend contradicts these trends, which consists in contrasting non-institutional ways of mastering the language with traditional institutional ones, while the former are often positioned not just as an alternative to the latter, but as the best and winning alternative. It often happens that private teachers, private language schools (language courses), when positioning their approaches, emphasize that they "teach not like at school", "teach not like at an institute". In fact, this means a willingness to offer a fundamentally new format of training without performing standard exercises and tasks – the absence of which automatically means the informal nature of training. Taking into account the fact that the most common format of non-formal language teaching in the 2010s is communicative training (often involving a native speaker), namely the organization of foreign language communication without reference to any program templates, another trend of non–institutional language education in the 2010s is the development of ideas about the so-called teaching of a foreign language language "without a textbook".

Teaching "without a textbook" is more of an everyday professional term than a scientific and theoretical one. They combine a very wide range of didactic practices, in which the course of classes is not united by reference to any didactic tool (textbook, textbook, etc.) underlying the program of classes. So the latter is absolutely free in nature, as well as the nature of the use of language in real everyday communication is free. In this case, the rejection of the program becomes theoretically possible, while if there is a need for mandatory mastering of a number of standard topics and performing standard exercises (that is, with institutional training), it is not possible in principle.

For the Russian didactic tradition, teaching without a textbook is generally alien. Practical teachers often note that even with maximum methodological freedom, it is more comfortable to have at least a formal program reflected on the pages of a textbook or manual in order to be able to adhere to it. For the English–speaking methodological tradition, this format is quite familiar; so such training was initially implemented mainly by native speakers - that is, foreign teachers working mainly in language training centers for additional education (language courses), in corporate training centers, as well as privately. The active development of corporate foreign language teaching in the 2010s and the "fashion" for the training format of training led to the fact that our teachers, who have become much more involved in these types of training over the decade, began to adopt this experience. Competition from native-speaking teachers also played a significant role here, largely due to the deceptive stereotype that, other things being equal, classes with a native speaker are more effective than with a compatriot who is fluent in a foreign language.

The trends described above relate primarily to non-formal language learning, let us consider below the features of informal learning that emerged in the 2010s.

It is obvious that the main source of information acquisition of a foreign language today is intercultural communication and information and communication digital environment. The past decade in this context was marked by the emergence, development and final entry into our lives of mobile messengers that allow not only instant communication with a person from anywhere in the world, but also the exchange of media with him.

For quite a long time, our country has been completely open to international social and communicative processes at all levels, so that the presence of friends, colleagues, or any other social contacts abroad was quite common in the 2000s. However, such communication was limited due to the rather expensive international connection. The development of stationary e-mail and messengers (for example, ICQ, which was very popular in the 2000s) has increased these capabilities, but a stationary communication channel still does not allow instant communication. Long time intervals between responses facilitate the communicative task and deprive a person of the cognitive challenge that they have to face when carrying out instant network foreign language communication. The idea that intensity, causing "intellectual stress", has a beneficial effect on the process of language acquisition, since it allows you to reveal a person's cognitive and personal resources, is the basis of the domestic theory of intensive language learning (G.A.Kitaygorodskaya), developed in the pre-digital era. Thus, the intensity, which has become a logical result of the intensification of everyday interlanguage communication, becomes one of the main features and vectors of the development of informal education in the 2010s.

Another positive feature of the informal learning of a foreign language in the digital age is to increase motivation. It is known that motivation is one of the axiomatically key success factors in any educational process. Motivation in the process of self-education is an even more important factor, because it cannot be regularly supported by a teacher. For independent learning of a foreign language, consistently high motivation is even more important. The fact is that even despite the development of intensive training, it takes years to fully master the language, that is, studying it is an investment of time, effort, etc. in the long term. In the pre-digital era, the truly effective way to master a foreign language in an unconstitutional way was to live or regularly visit the country of the language being studied. Of course, such an opportunity is available to a very small percentage of ordinary people. Self-education with the help of traditional didactic means (self-help books, manuals, films) allowed solving certain cognitive tasks, but could not provide an opportunity to fully and actively participate in the socio-communicative foreign language environment, which prevented the transition from linguistic knowledge and basic speech skills to the development of foreign language communicative competencies. Understanding this had a negative impact on maintaining motivation to learn the language independently. With the formation of the digital space, immersion in it has become possible even if a person does not travel abroad at all. The opportunity not only to touch the foreign-speaking world, but also to be constantly in it with the help of a mobile digital device, of course, gives a sense of practical benefit, significantly expanding the social, communicative and information field of a person.

Thus, the observed and analyzed in this paper features of the development of informal and informal learning of foreign languages in the digital age allows us to come to the following conclusions about the general trends of its development.

Foreign language information and speech works (texts) from the international network environment have ceased to be perceived as educational exotics, and have become of didactic and scientific and methodological interest not only in terms of self-education opportunities, but also in the context of the possibility of their introduction into the institutional educational process of educational institutions.

During the 2010s, communication has finally established itself as the main paradigm of language education, and by the 2020s, at this stage, the ideas of communicative learning are already axiomatic. So if previously communicative language learning was opposed to traditional (grammar-translation), today it is time to speak about the opposition of communicative learning with reference to the program to completely free communicative learning. The latter is based on the idea of full immersion in the language environment, where communication occurs spontaneously and the use of language does not fit into the program, plan, etc.; just as it happens in everyday life. This is the main difference between informal communicative language education and formal.

The accessible foreign-language social and communicative environment significantly equated the conditions of students who have the opportunity to regularly visit abroad and those who do not have such an opportunity. Undoubtedly, this gives a positive socio-educational effect from the point of view that achieving success depends on the person himself, on his motivation, self-discipline, perseverance, diligence and other strong-willed qualities that everyone can develop and develop.

The present work touches upon general educational and general social issues of mastering foreign languages against the background of digitalization of the socio-communicative and educational environment. The presented study highlights the significant changes in language formation that occurred in the 2010s in this context. The materials of this article can be useful as a meaningful vector and a starting point for a more detailed study of each trend and the creation of specialized scientific and methodological research and development in the 2020s.