STUDENTS’ NATIVE LANGUAGE AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Our experience of working with students of a transport (technical) university shows that many of them have serious problems in learning foreign languages. Students will not be able to realize their potential in future professional activities, involving foreign-language partners, since poor knowledge of a foreign language prevents them from establishing business contacts. The object of our research was linguistic competence as the basis for developing a communicative competence. Having analysed the existing linguistic and methodological literature, the educational process including learning English and French as a FL2 and the reasons for the students' poor knowledge of foreign languages, we came to the conclusion that the problem does not lie solely with the small number of school hours or poor knowledge obtained at school. The lack of linguistic competence results from the insufficient knowledge acquired from native language studies, it is one of the main reasons for the poor proficiency of students in foreign languages. Students are not familiar with linguistic terminology in their native language, and this fact greatly complicates explanation of the grammar of the studied foreign language. The purpose of this paper is to focus the attention of university teachers on the need to work with students to master Russian and foreign language terminology in the framework of a comparative approach, which is one of the main methods of teaching a foreign language, as it expands the general language awareness and develops the “linguistic flair”of students.