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…

For the past 30 years, much has been written about the works of Noam Chomsky. A comparison is presented of the latest writings about Chomsky (in particular P.M.S. Hacker's 1990 work) with those written in the early 1960s. (CFM)

Translation of a paper presented at the Northeast Confernece on the Teaching of Foreign Languages held in April 1966 in New York, New York. (DS)

The fact that impersonal verbs in Russian do not form active participles or gerunds is discussed and explained. (RM)

A method of teaching question formation in the Chinese language by use of transformational grammar is described. (RM)

Briefly discusses the work of L. Jakobovits, R. Wardhaugh and R. Lakoff with respect to current behavioristic and cognitivist theories of language learning. (PM)

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)

Two questions, what is a contrastive grammar, and what is comparable across linguistic systems, are touched on. The problem of the exact relationship of contrastive linguistics to linguistic theory is addressed. Two perhaps mutually exclusive views are discussed. See FL 508 197 for availability. (Author/RM)

Seeking out inter-language differences in the execution of a contrastive analysis is given priority over looking for manifestations of language universals. But unless a contrastive study is based upon an understanding of language universals and contains a set of instructions for how each language realizes them, the common ground for contrast can…

The author questions the usefulness of the concepts of transformational generative grammar, especially as represented in Jacobs and Rosenbaum's "English Transformational Grammar, for the teacher of English as a Second Language. Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, Chicago, March 1969. (FWB)