French language acquisition by bilingual students: Analyzing challenges and strategies to overcome them
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33910/1992-6464-2025-217-327-337Keywords:
multilingualism, languages of the indigenous groups of the North, Siberia, and the Far East, typologically different languages, coordinative and subordinative bilingualism, linguistic interferenceAbstract
Introduction. This article focuses on acquisition of French by bilingual students. French was selected as the target language because bilingual learners often encounter specific difficulties in mastering it that warrant investigation. The study aims to identify patterns of linguistic interference across different proficiency levels and to propose a theoretical framework for understanding language acquisition.
Materials and Methods. The study involved an analysis of experimental French language tests completed by students at the Institute of the Peoples of the North, Herzen University. The research methods included a review of scholarly literature on bilingualism, multilingualism, and language interference; observation of bilingual students’ speech production; an experiment; and comparative analysis. The experiment had certain limitations: a restricted sample size, a focus on subordinative bilinguals with Yakut as their dominant language, and an analysis limited to phonological, orthographic, and syntactic levels of language.
Results. The study documented interference-induced errors at phonological, orthographic, and syntactic levels in the French speech of bilingual students at the beginner stage of French learning. To mitigate language interference and promote autonomous language use, the authors propose an integrative approach that employs Russian as the base language while using Yakut as scaffolding. A contrastive-typological analysis of French, Russian and Yakut yields optimal learning outcomes.
Conclusions. Future research may focus on identifying and classifying errors in the acquisition of a specific foreign language by Northern indigenous students with coordinative and subordinative bilingualism types; expanding the participant pool to include diverse dominant languages and proficiency levels; incorporating morphological and lexical tasks in the experiment alongside spontaneous speech data; and developing, empirically validating, and assessing methodological tools for the integrative approach. We recommend adopting the principle of interconnected acquisition of the foreign language, Russian, and the native language when designing textbooks, multilingual dictionaries, and competency assessment tools. These resources should take into account learners’ language skills and cultural context, while ensuring the prevention of cross-linguistic interference.
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