This work is devoted to the use of the contrastive method: a comparative analysis of three language systems in modern teaching materials that meet the requirements of multilingual education with the example of German, English and native languages. The relevance of multilingual education is determined by the trend towards integration in the economic, cultural and political spheres. Multilingual education, consisting of the same knowledge of several languages, arises in those cases when the perfect mastery of foreign languages is not accompanied by the loss of the native language. This is important when choosing a teaching material for learning a foreign language. Contrastive exercises are a prerequisite for teaching a second foreign language both at the level of teaching writing, spelling, grammar, mastering vocabulary, and at the level of teaching listening and speaking. The main research methods are the analysis of the scientific literature in the field of teaching foreign languages, psychology and pedagogy on the research problem, the study and generalization of the experience of multilingual teaching of foreign languages at the Higher School of International Relations of the Institute of Humanities at St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, as well as pedagogical observation, questionnaires and conversations. The materials of the article are of practical importance for teachers of a foreign language, as they contain recommendations on the use of the system of contrastive exercises.