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1PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES
К ПРОБЛЕМЕ АНГЛО-ФРАНЦУЗСКОЙ ИНТЕРФЕРЕНЦИИ ПРИ ОБУЧЕНИИ СТУДЕНТОВ ВТОРОМУ ИНОСТРАННОМУ ЯЗЫКУ
Бойчук И.В.
Белгородский государственный национальный исследовательский университет, доцент кафедры иностранных языков и профессиональной коммуникации
CONCERNING THE PROBLEM OF ANGLO-FRENCH INTERFERENCE IN A STUDENTS' ACQUSITION OF A SECOND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Boichuk I. V.
Belgorod National Research University, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Professional Communication
Аннотация
В настоящей статье рассматриваются основные проблемы, которые могут возникнуть в результате интерференции при обучении французскому языку студентов, в той или иной степени владеющих английским языком, выученным в качестве первого иностранного. Рассматриваются положительные и отрицательные стороны этой интерференции и даются рекомендации по оптимальному использованию положительных моментов этой интерференции и даются рекомендации по нейтрализации её отрицательных сторон. Интерференция рассматривается в рамках разных уровней языка.
Abstract
This article deals with the main problems that may arise as a result of interference in the teaching of the French language to students who are more or less proficient in English, who have been taught as the first foreign language. Positive and negative aspects of this interference are considered and recommendations are given on the optimal use of the positive moments of this interference and recommendations are given for neutralizing its negative sides. Interference is considered within different levels of the language.
Ключевые слова: Английский язык, французский язык, интерференция, ложные друзья переводчика, оптимизация процесса обучения
Keywords: English, French, interference, false translator friends, learning process optimization
Introduction. In the face of the ever-increasing competition in the labor market, having a command of at least one other foreign language, apart from certainly essential English, is an indisputable advantage for graduates of higher education who are beginning their careers. It is known that in Western Europe the percentage of people who speak two or even three foreign languages is very high. In this country also one can hardly doubt that the knowledge of two and more foreign languages is an important advantage which could sometimes play a decisive role on the labor market. Besides, it is of crucial importance to bear in mind the words written by D. Graddol and cited by S.G. Ter-Minasova: "English will indeed play a crucial role in shaping the new world linguistic order, but its major impact will be in creating new generations of bilingual and multilingual speakers across the world" [12, 342]. From this point of view, it seems expedient that students of both linguistic and non-linguistic specialties should be able to master a second foreign language during the period of study at a higher educational institution. In modern conditions in the Russian Federation, such languages are in the vast majority of cases German, French or Spanish, although the role of the Chinese language is constantly increasing. Other languages, such as Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Polish for the time being are learned much more rarely. French, despite the fact that some loss of its former positions can be ascertained, continues to maintain the status of the
second international language and remains one of the most important and most studied languages [3, 2002]. Besides, Mr E. Macron, President of France, sees new brilliant prospects for French after the UK leaving the EU (Sputnik International). According to some predictions, mainly owing to the rise of French in Africa, "French speakers will number approximately 500 million people in 2025 and 650 million people, or approximately 7% of the world's population by 2050" [13: http].
In the conditions of teaching French in a higher educational institution, one sometimes has to face the inadequacy of time allocated for studying it as a second foreign language, which requires maximum optimization of the educational process for achieving the best results in the shortest possible time. A skillful use of Anglo-French interference makes it possible, in my opinion, to extend the well-known principle of exploiting the native language to the principle of exploiting the first foreign language. I have already examined this problem [15, 2012]. Skillful teachers manage to avail of any language that their students can speak [16, 2017].
Main Part
Let us consider the main problems of language interference arising in the teaching of the French language to the students who have mastered English within the standard program.
The problem of language interference as such attracted and continues to attract the attention of many linguists (U. Weinreich, E. Haugen, V. Yu. Ro-zentsveig, V. N. Yartseva and many others). As my experience shows, the problem of Anglo-French interference in teaching the French language to students in varying degrees knowing English is extremely important, and for achieving optimal results it must be taken into account for the proper construction of both strategy and tactics of their instruction.
In general, the peculiarities of Anglo-French interference have both a positive and a negative value in the process of acquisition of French. As follows from the material at my disposal, the following practical moments of Anglo-French interference have the main practical significance.
Vocabulary
It is common knowledge that the word stock of English contains a great deal of words of Romance origin (both Latin and French, the latter are also ultimately derived from Latin). The words of French origin can play a very important stylistic role in modern English [10, 2016]. In this regard it seems quite expedient to avail of the existence in Russian of a significant word stock of Latin origin, so called internationalisms [7, 2014]. It is more difficult to learn the languages in which the stock of so called international vocabulary (mainly of ancient Greek and Latin origin) is limited [14, 2014]. The bulk of the words of Romance origin came precisely from the French language. Even numerous English surnames are of French origin: Butler, Fletcher, Baskerville, Chase, Vere etc [6, 2011]. It is important to bear in mind that the French words were borrowed by the English language at different periods of its development, both in Middle English and Early New English. Of course, the words borrowed in the Middle English period are much more fully assimilated by the English language, but even in them students can easily recognize their French prototypes, borrowed from both the Norman and the Ile-de-France dialects of the French language: a river < une rivière, a table < une table, a veil < urn voile, a choice < un choix, a joy
< urn joie, a gaol/a jail < une geôle, an autumn < un automne, a chair < une chaire, a butcher < un boucher etc (one could easily adduce thousands of examples). Even the words whose spelling has been etymologized continue to remain easily recognizable: an advantage
< un avantage, an adventure < urn aventure, a fault < une faute, a doubt < un doute, une dette < a debt [1, 1992]. I believe that this circumstance is an extremely valuable help in assimilating French lexical material by students who already know the English language, allowing to save a great deal of time and effort.
At the same time, one should remember the danger of "false friends", which can lead to distortions in understanding the meaning of certain French words that resemble the corresponding English lexemes, for example, the English verb to deceive, whose main meaning is "deceiving", while the French verb decevoir has the main meaning of "disappointing", albeit it resembles prima facie the verb to deceive. It should be mentioned that Cambridge International Dictionary of English (Cambridge University Press, First published 1995)
gives a fairly complete list of French False Friends, containing more than 140 words, which, I believe, is a precious aid in this regard. As for students who are striving for an in-depth study of the language, the teacher applying the principle of individualization can recommend for their independent work to use various editions of English-French dictionaries and French-language textbooks for English speakers, or the use of the corresponding electronic resources to compare English and French lexical units. For instance, numerous French-English and English-French dictionaries would undoubtedly be very helpful. I am certain that this kind of work is very useful, as it provides more complete awareness, better understanding of the studied linguistic material and provides an easier and at the same time a more profound memorization of vocabulary.
Thus, it is at the lexical level that we are confronted with the most significant Anglo-French interference. On the whole, its role in teaching French can be regarded as positive. However, the assimilation of concerned lexical units requires special control of the teacher in order to avoid distortions that may arise due to the existence of the numerous "false friends" mentioned above. This is all the more important because the vocabulary of French origin is represented at all stylistic levels of the English language - from colloquial to poetic. Reliance on "old acquaintances" (in the terminology of S.A. Sandler), as my experience shows, is an unquestionably valuable methodical tool that significantly accelerates and facilitates the mastering of French vocabulary by students familiar with English as the first foreign language. According to my observations, students who studied German as the first foreign language, other things being equal, experienced greater difficulties in building up French vocabulary than students who studied English as the first foreign language, which, in my opinion, is due mainly to the positive role of Anglo-French interference. That said, one should not deny the positive role of Anglo-German interference in this area. Both English and German being Germanic languages, they share a very significant number of word stock, especially as far as the basic vocabulary is concerned. However sometimes the material form of these cognates is so different that a student can hardly recognize their provenance from the same proto-germanic source: sorrow < die Sorge, elbow < der Ell(en)bogen, both < beide etc, hence it does not seem expedient to mention it at all as having no practical value.
Spelling
There is also a very significant Anglo-French interference in the field of graphics and spelling. Even in the Pygmalion (as far back as 1912), Bernard Shaw speaks of both English and French as languages, where there is a very large gap between the graphic and phonetic forms of a word, which complicates and hinders their acquisition by foreigners. It is well known that modern English orthography was developed under the strong influence of French and Latin languages, which led to its considerable complication in comparison with the Old English period. Thanks to this, students who start learning French after having learned English are at least psychologically quite ready to the existence in the
studied foreign language of such phenomena as digraphs, trigraphs, mute consonants and vowels, and so on. Thus, they are in a better position than students who have studied German before on account of the absence of such phenomena in this language. At the same time, one should not underestimate the enormous difficulties facing the students at this level as well. It seems appropriate to cite here the statement of Stewart Reid in his article "French for all" about his Scottish pupils studying French: "In the early stages, written work in the foreign language will consist mostly of copying from the blackboard or course book, but even this causes great problems for some pupils. They meet accents, for example, for the first time some pupils will have great difficulties putting them on the correct letter facing the correct way. Those who are slow at writing English will be even slower here. Recognition of new letter groups will be very slow, especially if the pupil who has barely grasped the rules of spelling in English suddenly sees these rules flouted in French" [Stewart Reid 1987, 323]. This statement lists the same difficulties that Russian students face when studying French after having learned English. As my practical experience shows, one of the main difficulties is indeed the accentual and subacute diacritic marks peculiar to the French language. Absent both in English (except rare, relatively recently borrowed words from the French language, such as façade, café, résumé) and in Russian (except for the diaeresis over e), and nowadays sometimes ignored even by the French especially in the careless writing on the Internet, these signs require considerable attention, particularly at the initial stage of learning the French language. It should be clearly explained from the very beginning that the French diacritical marks have nothing to do with the accent in the Russian language and their setting, unlike the arbitrary setting of this sign in the Russian language, which can be dispensed with, is still strictly necessary in the French spelling (in the French educational institutions the incorrect setting of a diacritical mark when checking the written works, is considered a spelling mistake and thus influences the mark given). In addition, considerable difficulties are caused by the assimilation of French letter combinations, outwardly similar to some English ones, but pronounced in French in a completely different way. I believe that it is the problem of Anglo-French interference at the level of letter combinations that requires the teacher to be particularly vigilant, since, at least in the incipient stage, English-speaking students tend to transfer mechanically the rules for reading similar English letters to the corresponding French ones. As my experience shows, special attention is required for the letter combinations ch, th, eau, oi, au, ou, oy, ai, ei.
Phonology
At the phonetic level, Anglo-French interference plays an essentially negative role, as students often try to automatically transfer the pronunciation skills acquired by them during the study of the first foreign language to the phonetic system of the French language, which is absolutely unacceptable and requires immediate correction. Particular attention should be paid to the lack of interdental consonants in French, the difference in the pronunciation of French /k/ and English / r /, as
well as the problem of shwa sound transfer to French students' speech production. It seems appropriate for us to focus a student's attention on the French sound / o / and its specifics. A special students' attention should also be drawn to the presence in French of such a specific phonemic phenomenon as nasal sounds, absent both in English and in Russian, and the phonological significance of these sounds. My teaching experience shows that the problem of nasal sounds is one of the most difficult and it has to be repeatedly returned to during the learning process. The French grapheme h, which in French, unlike English, is never uttered, also gives rise to numerous difficulties, as, divided into two varieties h mute and h aspirated, it participates in the realization of such a complicated for proper mastering by foreigners phonetic phenomenon, as the liaison. Very important is also the problem of the inadmissibil-ity of the diphthongization of French vowels, to which some students show a strong inclination under the influence of the English phonetic system. To the positive moments from the point of view of mastering the French phonetics by students, one can attribute the skill acquired by them in the study of the English language to avoid devoicing of the final consonants, - a phenomenon proper to both Russian and German, but non-existent in either English or French. Students who have studied German as their first foreign language usually do not possess such a skill and have to acquire it from the scratch. Besides, students familiar with English experience less difficulty in mastering the phonological significance of the openness / closure of the French vowels.
Grammar
As is known, the English language, having assimilated in the course of its historical development a huge amount of vocabulary of Romance, mostly French, origin, has retained, in the main, its initial Germanic grammar system, though it has been significantly modified under the influence of French as well. Due to this circumstance, English-French interference in the study of French by students who are more or less familiar with English in this field is relatively small. I believe that in some cases it is possible to cautiously point to a certain similarity between the English Present Perfect and the French passé composé, but in general, in this case, any drawing of grammatical parallels between English and French seems to me inexpedient. Besides, at a higher level one could explain to the students the unusual place of some English adjectives: court martial, President elect, Attorney General etc. by the impact of French.
Conclusion. Thus, English-French interference while teaching French to the students who have already learned English as their first foreign language has both positive and negative sides with a clear preponderance of the former. However, one should be always on the alert while exploiting these positive sides, taking into account numerous "traps" such as "false friends" etc. Nevertheless the similarities between the two languages when skillfully turned to good advantage could significantly reduce time and efforts required for the acquisition of French. It goes without saying that this is
only possible when a teacher has a good command of both English and French.
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17. Sputnik International - 15 июня 2018
