Tatyana Pavlova

The problem of teaching a second foreign language phonetics to students is observed in this paper from the point of view that phonetic skills profoundly contribute to communicative competence formation on the whole. It is obvious that phonetic skills determine how successful the communication on a foreign language is. When teaching the German language phonetics to students whose first foreign language is English, the phonetic difficulties can be caused by the phonetic phenomenon of transfer. To eliminate the first foreign language phonetic influence on the phonetics of the second foreign language a teacher has to understand clearly why it occurs. In order to take the process of phonetic skills formation under control and to make it somewhat predictable, the teaching methods should be aimed at minimization of unconscious phonetic transfer.