Background. The study of foreign language teaching methods has a long tradition in Ukraine, but the methodology of teaching related languages has not yet become an object of widespread interest among scholars and is insufficiently described in glottodidactics, and therefore becomes a promising area of study. Particularly relevant are the way of introducing and analysing new grammatical or lexical material in the classroom, the expediency of using translation tasks, which are used to automate the use of language structures, prevent and correct errors, the role and place of the mother tongue in the process of learning a foreign language, in particular Polish, etc. This problem is relevant today and is in the focus of glottodidactics, although researchers' opinions are often opposite – from the undeniable need to involve the mother tongue in the process of learning a foreign language to the absolute rejection of its use, i.e., the idea that learning a foreign language can be effective only if it is used in every learning situation without using the mother tongue. Purpose. The purpose of the analyse the linguistic and didactic foundations of learning Polish as a foreign language by Ukrainians and to outline the specifics of teaching Polish to Ukrainian-speaking students, to analyse the role of the mother tongue in teaching a foreign language as well. Results. In this paper, the choice of strategy, methods and didactic techniques is determined by the goals and objectives of language training, the duration of training, as well as the linguistic homogeneity/homogeneity of the group of students. My own long-term teaching practice, also the experience of Polish methodologists, shows that teaching Polish to Ukrainian-speaking students is different from the traditional communicative approach. It seems that ignoring the mother tongue (Ukrainian) in the process of teaching Polish hinders the development of students' productive skills, so special tasks should be used in the class that allow comparing/comparison of linguistic constructions of both languages: explanations in the mother tongue of complex cases of the grammatical system, automated grammatical and lexical-grammatical exercises (drills), for example, for mastering verb-noun control and translation tasks of various kinds. Keywords: Polish as a foreign language, mother tongue, methods of teaching foreign languages, comparative and contrastive method, grammatical structure.
Алла Болотнікова (Fri,) studied this question.