LEARNING GERMAN AS A SECOND FOREIGN LANGUAGE: IS GRAMMAR SO DIFFICULT?

Nataliya Belenkova¹, Irina Kruse^2
1Assist. Prof., Dr., Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), the Russian Federation, belenkovanm@gmail.com
²Senior Lecturer, Dr., Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), the Russian Federation, kruseirina@rambler.ru

Abstract

The awareness of the second foreign language has become a necessity nowadays. Therefore, the curricula of non-language higher education institutions include learning two foreign languages where learning English is compulsory and the second foreign language can be chosen by the students. Such languages as German, French or Spanish are the most popular for learning as the second foreign languages. The popularity of German is explained mainly by the opportunity to continue the higher education in a German speaking country or by the prospects of developing carrier.
On the other hand, the students feel anxious on studying German. There is a stereotype that the grammar structure of this language is very complicated and can cause many difficulties especially when Russian learners have some awareness and communicative skills of the English language.
Various aspects of English-German interference in phonetics and lexis were already studied by the authors (“First Steps in Learning German: Phonetics and Rules of Reading” - International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts SGEM 2017, Conference Proceedings, Volume I Language and Linguistics, Health Policy and Services, 28-31 March, 2017, Vienna, Austria, pp. 73-77. “First Steps in Learning German: How to Learn Lexis” - Proceedings of EDULEARN17 Conference 3th-5th July 2017, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 9554-9556). This paper focuses on the issues of learning grammar in German. It analyses different grammar phenomena and their correlation with the students’ native and the first foreign languages.
The authors examine the practical experience of teaching German as a second foreign language at the Institute of Law at the RUDN University (Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia). They generalize the results of the survey held among the lawyers-to-be. The recommendations on the more efficient development of the use of German grammar are put forward

Keywords: teaching German as a second foreign language; linguistic interference, teaching grammar.