The Russian Language Portfolio as an Effective Technology in Foreign Language Lifelong Learning

A successful learner in the modern society should be able to integrate knowledge from different sources, educate and self-educate throughout the life in order to be competitive in an increasingly globalized labor market. The Language Portfolio technology offers new possibilities for supporting students’ self-directed language learning. The article aims to study the effectiveness of using the Russian Language Portfolio technology in promoting students’ independent language learning. The leading approach to the study of this problem is competence-based approach as it corresponds to the understanding of the fundamental purposes of education formulated in UNESCO documents. The author gives the definition of the term "self-education", offers the Instructions section to the structure of the Russian Language Portfolio, defines invariant requirements to it, reveals difficulties on the creation the Russian Language Portfolio and singles out three basic groups of students’ self-educational skills and abilities. The materials of the article may be useful for the teachers and lecturers to design courses on “Theory and methods of foreign language teaching”, “Technologies of foreign language teaching”, “Theory of foreign language teaching”.