INFORMAL DIGITAL LEARNING OF ENGLISH AMONG SERBIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Informal Digital Learning of English (IDLE) is gaining ground in the field of foreign language pedagogy. The present paper focuses on the IDLE experiences of Serbian university students with the aim of determining their most common IDLE practices and the potential influence of individual variables such as gender, amount of daily screen time, and self-perceived English proficiency on these practices. In a cross-sectional survey, a total of 143 EFL students at four different faculties of the University of Novi Sad completed a structured questionnaire developed based on existing articles that explored similar IDLE practices. The results show that the most common ways students engage with English online are related to entertainment and passive consumption (watching clips, listening to music), while active use (like writing blogs or using English learning apps) is less frequent. The perceived English proficiency is the only variable that significantly influences the students’ IDLE activities. The results are interpreted in terms of their pedagogical potential for more autonomous and self-directed EFL learning in an extramural context.