The Contribution of Academics and Extracurricular Activities of Higher Education to the Language Proficiency

This study raises the topic of teaching English in the framework of training in the university. The study is conducted on the participants of the longitudinal study TOSUR, students of the Higher School of Economics. The sample of the study was 251 people. The research hypothesis is that extracurricular activities in English (such as tutoring or courses, clubs participation, watching movies in English, listening to online courses) have a positive effect on academic performance in English. To test this hypothesis, we used the academic results of the students - the Unified State Exam scores and the grade for the final exam in the second year. The analysis of the data showed that in our sample there are no significant differences in the average scores for the final exam in English for different groups of students, including students with different levels of satisfaction with the quality of teaching, self-esteem level of the language, attending or not attending various types of extracurricular activities. Perhaps, such results are related to research limitations, such as the initial high score of the Unified State Examination, or with the subjectivity of self-esteem level of English.