Non-Formal Learning of Foreign Languages in the Polish Educational Context (Based on the Example of Students of French)

Abstract

This article is an attempt to conceptualise situations of non-formal learning of foreign languages ​​in opposition to those situations of formal and informal learning. Its purpose is to show the blurred boundaries of each of the above categories, so that it is impossible to define one without referring to the other. In the first part of the work, we rely on the definitions developed by Schugurensky in the field of civic education, transferring them to the field of the teaching of foreign languages, and on Sockett’s studies on informal language learning in higher education, illustrating them with examples from the Polish educational context. In the second part, we reveal the difficulties related to the classification of specific situations of foreign language learning into particular categories on the basis of our own research conducted among students of French philology at the University of Wrocław. In conclusion, we present the prototype of a model situating non-formal learning in a continuum of different foreign language-learning situations.