Abstract:

Life Long learning approach assumes acquiring new knowledge and developing new skills regardless the age of the learners. However, teaching and training grown-ups is different from teaching the younger learners. First, grown up people have less time for studying due to their responsibilities at work and family matters. Their motives are focused not on getting a diploma or any other certificate, but on the opportunity to get a promotion in their career or realize the demands of the heads of the department or an office. Other motives are self-development and self-education. In addition, the older the learners are the more psychological problems they face: their memory capacity, attention, concentration etc. are not as powerful as they were earlier, they gradually fade with age.

All issues mentioned above should be taken into consideration when starting courses of foreign languages for grown up learners. The goal of the paper is to examine a new approach to teaching language and speech skills. Under this approach studying English grammar should be integrated into the extension of the active and passive vocabulary, on the one hand, and developing speaking skills, on the other hand. The paper presents the examples of the experiment of teaching adults on short-term intensive courses of the English language in the RUDN University. The paper compares the output of the diagnostic and achievement tests, shows the lingo didactic technologies of the presentation and practice of the language units under study as well as the results of the learners’ speech activities.
The findings of the paper can be implemented in the practice of teaching adults the English language.

Keywords:

Life Long learning, psychological challenges, teaching language and speech skills, integrated studying grammar and vocabulary, teaching experience.