TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TO PROFICIENT USERS

The paper discusses some psychological and methodological aspects of teaching English as a Foreign Language to university students at high levels of proficiency. It aims to address the issues which could cause concern and uncertainty to non-native English language lecturers when teaching proficient users. It provides an overview of existing research studies in this field, and shares experiences and thoughts from observations gained in teaching English to proficient users at the University of Defence. It outlines students and lecturers' profiles from the academic and psychological points of view, and suggests some non-traditional methods which contribute to engaging students in the learning-teaching process.