Abstract. The article is devoted to the description of the uniqueness of adults as a separate psychological and age group of students in mastering a foreign language. In the modern methodology of teaching a foreign language, there are many scientific works devoted to the study of the independence of students at different levels of education, while studying the features of the formation of independence of adults when teaching them a foreign language has received very little attention from researchers. At the same time, adults, like no other group of students, need to form this quality of personality at a high level. In order to determine the importance of taking into account the characteristics of adult learners when mastering a foreign language, one should start by studying the basic principles of the science of andragogy, which the author of the article considers as a section of learning theory aimed at solving issues related to teaching adult learners.