Contrastive Analysis: English-German

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: Speaking English in a 'native-like' way does not only consist of the abilities of speaking fluently and gramatically correct. Pronounciation and the proper use of the right sounds at the right time play an important role just as well. This paper outlines the English and German sound system, alludes to the differences between the systems and points at possible resulting problems for the German English learner. Before comparing English to other languages it has to be advised that English occurs in many global and local variations. Similar to the German 'Hochdeutsch', two main standards had been established: 'Received Pronounciation' (RP) of todays's British English and 'General American' (GA). Since the chose literature basically deals with the latter, this paper is limited to 'General American'. To supply an introduction and a basis for the subsequent chapter a short overview of general sound production and the taxonomy of characterizing sounds is provided. Following this taxonomy Englih consonantes are firstly described and thereafter opposed to their German counterparts. Based on the determined differnces, possible phonemic and phonetic difficulties for the English learner are shown and adequate tasks to overcome those obstacles are introduced. Analogue to the previous, the presentation of the vowel systems, their differences and resulting problems completes the paper.