Some aspects of comparing English and French when learning French as a second foreign language by students of «Tourism» and «Hospitality»

Since both French and English languages use the Latin alphabet, the process of learning one language based on the other is much faster. There are some similar grammatical categories that are typical for both languages. Furthermore, the vocabularies of these languages derive from Latin stems and, for this reason, are easy for learners to understand. This article discusses some aspects of comparing English and French in the process of learning French as a second foreign language by students who are native speakers of Russian and previously studied English. The target group is presented by students from non-linguistic fields of studies, namely ‘Tourism’ and ‘Hospitality Business’. Their practices of knowledge transfer from one language into another are analyzed. The relevance of this topic can be explained by the fact that today it is not sufficient for students from non-linguistic fields of studies to use only one foreign language in their future professional area. At the same time the knowledge of the second foreign language should be confident enough to meet the requirements of basic communication in the professional environment. Today there is little methodical literature on teaching French as a second foreign language after English, and there are even less textbooks for parallel learning of the two languages based on comparative analysis. The main problem is that the use of one language when studying another one may have both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand, it is easier for students to acquire a new language acting as a mediator language when drawing a parallel with a previously studied language of the same language family. On the other hand, the phenomenon of linguistic interference, or code-mixing takes place. The present article analyzes concrete cases when the use of the first foreign language prevents from or contributes to the effective second language learning. The article contains recommendations on reducing the negative influence of one language on another.