QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSIONS

1. What is Contrastive Analysis? Give an example to

illustrate the defintion.

- Fisiak (1981) defines CA as "a sub-discipline of linguistics concerned with

the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of language in order
to determine both the differences and similarities between them.“
In other words, CA is a branch of applied linguistics that is concerned with
studying and finding the similarities and differences between a pair of
languages or more based on the assumption that languages can be compared
then applying these findings to the area of teaching and learning languages.
- Eg: A study on vowels in English and Vietnamese – A contrastive analysis

2. What is the difference between comparative linguistics

and contrastive linguistics?
3. What is interference/transfer? Discuss positive & negative
transfer.
- The term transfer/interference is dealt with in CA to explain the difficulties
learners face in learning a second language. To avoid any misunderstanding,
transfer is used interchangeably with interference. Transfer refers to the influence
of L1 on L2 in both positive and negative way. Odlin (1989) presents a definition
of transfer as "The influence resulting from the similarities and differences
between the target language and any other language that has been previously
acquired”.
- Positive transfer occurs where a language item in L1 is also present in L2, so
acquisition of this item makes little or no difficulty for the learners. Negative
transfer occurs when there is no concordance between L1 and L2 and thus,
acquisition of the new L2 structure would be more difficult and errors reflecting L1
structure would be produced. (Powell: 1998)
4. What is the procedure for contrastive analysis?
5. What is a vowel? What is a consonant? What is the difference between a
vowel and a consonant?

6. What is a vowel? Compare and contrast English and Vietnamese vowels?

7. What is a consonant? Compare and contrast English and Vietnamese

consonants.

8. What are sentence elements in English and their equivalents in

Vietnamese? Give an example for each.

9. What are clause’s elements and verb patterns in English and their
equivalents in Vietnamese? Give an example for each.

10. What does word mean? What do morphemes mean? Give examples in
English & Vietnamese.

11. What is the definition of homonyms in English? How are homonyms

classified in English and Vietnamese? Give an example for each.

12. What is the definition of idioms? How are idioms classified according to
grammatical functions in English? Give examples in English & Vietnamese.

13. What is the definition of figures of speech? Name types of figures of speech
in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese. Give an example for each.

14. What is the definition of simile and metaphors? Give examples in English
and Vietnamese.

15. What is the definition of metonymy? Give exmples in English and

Vietnamese.