Abstract:

The current language situation which is characterized by the growth of polylinguism has caused an increasing interest of scholars and educational workers to the study of language interference in foreign language learning. Despite a comparatively large number of works devoted to the study of the influence of students’ first language (mother tongue) on their foreign language acquisition, the problem of interference of two foreign languages in the learning process has not been given the attention it deserves. The paper focuses on lexical skills development in teaching English for Special Purposes (ESP) as a second foreign language to the students of International Relations who earlier studied French as their first foreign language with regard to the effects of language interference between the first foreign language and the second one. The author assumes that in such conditions lexical interference between the two foreign languages (English and French) can occur and it will play a significant role in diplomatic terminology acquisition, given the fact that a large portion of English diplomatic vocabulary has been taken from words of French. The long-standing teaching practice has inspired the author to put forward a hypothesis that the process of lexical skills development will be more effective if ESP teachers take into consideration both positive and negative shift of learners’ skills and abilities from their first foreign language (French) into the acquisition of their second foreign language (English) and if the teaching process is based on the systematic approach with a set of exercises aimed at vocabulary learning facilitation specially developed on the basis of authentic texts. The author considers that a special teaching and learning complex is required for the purpose of teaching English as a second foreign language after French and offers an approach combining an application of integrative set of exercises for vocabulary learning through intensive reading of authentic texts and Critical Pedagogy techniques to promote reading comprehension development. The author presents the results of a pilot study carried out to test the effectiveness of the methodology for lexical skills development, learners’ vocabulary expansion, and the reduction of the number of errors made by students. The participants of the study were Russian speaking university students of International relations who learned French as their first foreign language and English as their second foreign language. The research design included testing to detect students’ lexical errors and and questionnaire to find out their motivation to learn ESP. The results of the study confirm the effectiveness of the systematic approach based on combining integrative set of exercises with Critical Pedagogy techniques. The results demonstrate that there is correlation between the application of methodology for lexical skills development and the reduction of students’ errors and the growth of their motivation to learn ESP.

Keywords:

English for Special Purposes, second foreign language, French, language interference, lexical skills, language of Diplomacy, Critical Pedagogy, methodology.