Dual-Language Teachers: Have You Done Contrastive Analysis with the VNG?

In dual-language Spanish/English classrooms, contrastive analysis is a strategy that helps bridge academic vocabulary and build metalinguistic awareness. A single contrastive analysis exercise can explore cognates, suffix and prefix patterns, grammar, and writing conventions, and can produce a lot of bang for the buck. And VNG visuals can make contrastive analysis even more powerful!

We've created a template on the Resources page to do contrastive analysis with the VNG. Here's how it works:

1. Have students participate in a structured conversation using the VNG visual at the Every Voice Method, in whichever language you typically teach this content.
2. Show the class the visual on the contrastive analysis template.
3. Have students guess parts of speech, syllables, and morphology, then write the correct answers on the template for all students to see and copy.
4. For synonyms and antonyms, have students brainstorm with their partners or table group using the sentence stem, One _____ (synonym/antonym) is… Then, call on a few students to create a class list.
5. For class definition and example sentence, have students work with their partners or table groups. Call on a few groups, then create a class-wide definition and example sentence.
6. Show the visual in the second language and repeat Steps 3-5.
7. Ask students to share what similarities and differences they notice between English and Spanish.