Exploring English-Spanish contrastive grammar explanations in English for Academic Purposes reading comprehension materials at university level

Abstract

A topic of debate in English for Academic Purposes reading comprehension courses in Spanish speaking universities is the role of grammar in in-house materials. This study explored and analysed the way in which these materials deal with contrastive grammar, in order to promote reflection and discussion on the subject of English-Spanish contrastive grammar explanations. Results showed that there are inaccuracies in the metalanguage used, in the Spanish-English contrastive analysis of some morphosyntactic structures and in the choices of instances of direct translation from English into Spanish. It is concluded that Spanish teachers of English academic reading comprehension should be provided with reference materials that allow them to describe in a well-founded manner the differences and similarities between the linguistic resources used in these two languages.