Recent approaches in Russian pedagogy have focused on active skills, emphasizing communication and often paying scant attention to grammatical analysis. Contrastive analysis of Russian with English, once common, is now less than respectable. This development, in my view, has been detrimental to Russian teaching. Overt comparison of Russian with English and, for that matter, with other non-Slavic or Slavic languages known to learners, is often the best way to apprehend difficult grammatical and lexical semantic items.
I illustrate the efficacy of contrastive and comparative analysis
by discussing six points posing special semantic difficulties. Three
are grammatical: 1) demonstrative pronouns, comparing two-term and
three-term systems; 2) indefinite meaning, with its degrees and
quantitative implications; 3) expression of transitivity in Russian
vs. English. Three are lexical: we illustrate contrastive analysis in
approaching the difficult semantics of the particles