Effects of Bilingualism on Students' Linguistic Education: Specifics of Teaching Phonetics and Lexicology

In the study of English in a bylingual environment, issues related to the need to develop students' phonetic and lexical competencies, which include communication, phonetic and auditory skills and lexical sufciency, are of particular relevance. The motive of this study is the need to improve the methodology of teaching English in the context of student immersion in a foreign language educational environment, by implementing additional thematic courses in the general educational program aimed at improving the phonetic and lexical competencies necessary for successful learning in a bilingual environment. The purpose of the article is to study the feasibility and efectiveness of studying phonetics and lexicology by students-translators who study in a bilingual educational environment. An educational experiment was conducted with the participation of 75 students-translators, in the educational process of which the disciplines of phonetics and lexicology were integrated for two academic hours per week for one year. The efectiveness of studying phonetics and lexicology within the framework of bilingual education has been proved and the skills and achievements of students that they have acquired in the process of bilingual education with an emphasis on phonetics and lexicology have been analyzed. Control tests yielded the following results: among the 46 Russian-speaking participants the percentage of English speakers at the C2 level was 7% (3 people), C1—79% (36 people), B2—14% (7 people). To achieve the most efective learning in a bilingual environment, especially when it takes place in a minority language, it is worth emphasizing students' learning of phonetics and vocabulary. Using this approach, students were able to form and develop a number of phonetic and lexical skills and improve academic performance.