Pessimism regarding pedagogical applications of contrastive studies, and reasons therefore, are described. Several misunderstandings believed to contribute to this pessimism, and several areas of controversy concerning uses of contrastive studies, are discussed. See FL 508 197 for availability. (RM)

The claim that the best language teaching materials are based on a contrast of the two competing linguistic systems has long been a popular one in language teaching. It exists in strong and weak versions, the strong one arising from evidence from the availability of some kind of metatheory of contrastive analysis and the weak from evidence from…

Although critical of some of the claims made for contrastive analysis in the past, this article treats contrastive analysis as a useful pursuit which can contribute to language learning. (FB)

Examines errors made by English speakers learning German and, in attempting to find sources for them, contrasts certain phenomena of German and English grammar. The phenomena in question are cleft sentences and the treatment of case. (TL)

A brief discussion of the role of contrastive linguistics and transformational generative grammar in studying transfer and interference in language learning. The base language is not necessarily the mother tongue. It is the language known by the learner which most closely resembles the new language being learned. (AMH)

In this paper, the author raises the question of exactly which information is of fundamental importance in the construction of phonological tasks in a course in a foreign language. He attempts to indicate an answer with respect to a particular problem encountered by native speakers of Japanese and Russian in learning English: substitution of…

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT CONCERNED WITH WRITING A TRANSFORMATIONAL GENERATIVE GRAMMAR FOR REFLEXIVE SENTENCES OF ENGLISH AND SPANISH BUT RATHER WITH THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF TRANSFORMATIONAL ANALYSIS--THE UNDERLYING, FUNDAMENTAL NOTIONS THAT CAN BE APPLIED TO PROBLEMS OF LANGUAGE TEACHING. THE AUTHORS RELATE THESE NOTIONS (LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS,…

The internalized grammar of the bilingual is different from that of a monolingual. The bilingual has, in addition to the entries that are proper to each of the two languages he speaks, certain union entries. These are extensive in the case of the Spanish/English bilingual since there are many items in the two languages that manifest systematic…

Part of a 20-year Yugoslav Serbocroatian-English Contrastive Project, this study is intended to make students, teachers, textbook writers, and scholars aware of elements in the system of English modals that might cause difficulties to the native Serbocroatian-speaking learner of English. An eclectic method of contrastive analysis consisting of…

A contrastive analysis of English and Korean sentences, including error analysis, is presented. The study focuses on word order, comparing the languages' similarities and differences with the objective of understanding better how the structural differences inhibit the progress of the Korean learner of English. The English data are derived from…

This introduction to Levantine Arabic pronunciation is designed to teach the student to recognize the major points of phonological interference between Levantine Arabic and American English, as well as the significant phonological contrasts within the dialect of Arabic itself, and to provide the student with a model for mimicry. Tape recordings…

This study, contrasting grammatical structures in English and Hungarian, considers those areas of grammar in the two languages which would cause the greatest interference for the native English speaker learning Hungarian. The choice of topics is based on the author's personal observation, both of English speakers learning Hungarian and of…