Peculiarities of teaching a second/third foreign language based on English

Problem. The article deals with general issues relating to the main features of teaching a second or third foreign language (German and French, based on English) to students specializing in applied linguistics. A short list of similarities and differences between English, German and French in the context of their learning is given. This study presents an overview of the concept of multilingual education and analyses the main methods of teaching a third language. The problems associated with teaching a second foreign language are not sufficiently revealed, as this discipline is not very widespread in non-language educational institutions. It generally holds that the methodology of teaching a second foreign language does not differ from that of teaching a first foreign language, except that the second language is taught to a lesser extent. This approach does not take into account a number of characteristics that affect the effectiveness of learning the subject. Goal. The aim is to present the main features of teaching the second/third foreign language (German and French based on previously learnt English) to students majoring in Applied Linguistics. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to find more effective methods of teaching a second foreign language. Methodology. To achieve this goal, a number of research methods were used: theoretical analysis and generalization of pedagogical and methodological sources on the issues of third language teaching didactics and the concept of multilingual education. The term «multilingualism» is used in official European terminology to refer to both the linguistic diversity of a society and the ability of a person to speak several languages. The concept of "multilingual education" applies to both the development of an individual language repertoire and to «plurilingual education» i.e., education in a context of linguistic and cultural diversity. English, German and French have many things in common: Latin spelling and lexical similarities. All three languages contain many cognates - words that are similar in spelling and pronunciation and mean the same thing. All of these languages have a subject-verb-object syntactic structure. Consequently, the main problems in learning a second/third language after learning English, in the context of three foreign languages in contact with the mother tongue, are interference not only from the mother tongue but also from the second/third language, as well as positive language transfer, given that they both belong to the same Roman language group. Originality. The modern didactic approaches to multilingualism cause a major change not only in the way we teach, but also in the way we learn, develop curricula, and train future professionals. Practical value. The integration of work on language representation and multilingual learning, as well as explaining the plurilingual didactic approach to students, will make the language learning process more focused on students' real skills, more flexible and more creative.