Abstract:

The contemporary global system is developing along the path of internationalization, becoming more open, multicultural, actively strengthening international, economic, cultural, and political contacts. Therefore, the knowledge of foreign languages has become one of the first and foremost requirements for university graduates ensuring their success in professional activity and communication, promoting competitiveness and mobility. Multilingual specialists proficient in two or more foreign languages and aware of multicultural norms and values are in great demand in modern society.

Despite the fact that there are a number of studies focusing on the influence of students’ native language on their foreign language acquisition, the issues of cross-linguistic influence of students’ first foreign language (FL1) and their second foreign language (FL2) are not sufficiently considered. Also, there is small number of research on the factors contributing to students' FL2 proficiency in trilingual contact (i.e., their native language, FL1 and FL2).

This article focuses on the cross-linguistic influence that occurs when English for Special Purposes (ESP) is taught as a FL2 to Russian-speaking university students who study German as their FL1.

The long-standing teaching practice has inspired the authors to analyse cross-linguistic influence and to put forward a hypothesis that when Russian-speaking students study the English language as FL2 and German as FL1, both negative lexical interference and positive transfer might occur.

To test the hypothesis, a pilot study was conducted during which the participants were questioned about the languages they studied and their influence on each other. The research methodology included questionnairing and testing. The research participants were RUDN University students.

The analysis of questionnaires shows that in case of receptive activity (reading), German, which is closely related to English, might serve as a source of positive transfer. In productive activity (written and oral), negative lexical interference arises and plays a significant role. The sources of interference are the native language and the first foreign language of the students.

The results of the test confirm the presence of a positive transfer of cognitive skills and negative lexical interference in the acquisition of ESP terminology, the source of which is students’ FL1 (German). Learners’ typical mistakes are associated with word order, the use of articles, prepositions, false friends, complex noun formation, and German words that have more than one English equivalent, depend on their language experience and are due to their first foreign language interference.

The authors come to the conclusion that in multilingual environment a special systematic approach with a set of exercises should be developed to make it clear where and why a student chooses wrong terms and how to avoid it in teaching ESP as FL2.

Keywords:

Multilingualism, lexical interference, English for Special Purposes, German, error analysis, contrastive analysis, third language acquisition, cross-linguistic influence.