Fossilisation as a Bilingual Phenomenon of Foreign Language Acquisition among Students of a Non-Linguistic University

The research aims to substantiate the need to increase the level of bilingualism among students of non-linguistic universities in order to improve their communication skills. The paper analyses the phenomenon of language fossilisation, namely the ingraining of errors and their transformation into a stable speech habit of a student; presents the essence of bilingualism; characterises its types; determines the level of formation of the three types of bilingualism among students of a non-linguistic university: subordinate bilingualism, medial (mixed) bilingualism and coordinate bilingualism. Scientific novelty of the research lies in developing criteria for determining the types of bilingualism among students of non-linguistic universities. As a result, it has been proved that the level of foreign language proficiency for the majority of the students, despite their having spent a long time learning the language (8-10 years), has stopped at the phase of medial (mixed) bilingualism. Thus, the process of language fossilisation is observed, which means that there is a need to integrate foreign language teaching methodologies into the educational process contributing to the blocking of fossilisation and formation of a linguistic personality freely participating in foreign language communication.