Contrastive Analysis

Week 1

By Thuy-Thanh Nguyen, Ph.D.

English Department
Hanoi University

Overview

● Linguistic comparison & Contrastive Analysis

● Contrastive Phonetics & Application

● Contrastive Phonology & Application

● Mid-term test (towards the end of the course)

Linguistic comparison & Contrastive
Analysis

● The role of linguistic comparison in branching Linguistics

● History of CA

● Grounding theories for CA

Linguistic comparison
Linguistic comparison

→ Typology
Branches of Linguistics

● Subject matter: Human language → structure &

functions

○ Structures: morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics

○ Functions: how humans use and manipulate the language

→ Micro Linguistics & Macro Linguistics

Contrastive Analysis (CA)

● History

● Assumptions

● Transfer
CA - history

● Pearl Harbor attack

● The increasing number of immigrants to the US

→ The need to find a method to teach adults ASAP(!)

CA - Assumptions

● L1 acquisition & L2 learning = totally different

● L1 & L2 have different linguistic systems → learning a

new language is to add to the current system a new one

● Similarities = support learning; Differences = hinder

learning
CA - Transfer

● Language transfer refers to the use of the first language

(or other languages known) in a second-language
context.” (Gass & Behney, 2013, p. 47)

● “The experience or performance on one task influences

performance on some subsequent task” (Ellis, 1965, p. 3).

CA - Transfer

The Iceberg Model of

Language Interdependence
by Cummins (1980)
 Language Transfer and Representation (Gass & Behney,

2013, p. 37)

Language Transfer and Interference (Brown, 2006, p.

109)