Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive Analysis was used extensively in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining why some features of a target language were more difficult to acquire than others. According to the behaviourist theories dominant at the time, language learning was a question of habit formation, and this could be reinforced or impeded by existing habits. Therefore, the difficulty in mastering certain structures in a second language (L2) depended on the difference between the learners' mother language (L1) and the language they were trying to learn. The two components of language were mimicry, a simple habit formation through reinforcement. Analogy, complex habit formation through extension of mimicked forms to new situation. There are two types of transfer, claimed researchers; Positive transfer and Negative transfer; This transfer has similar structures facilitate learning. L1 habits can successfully be used in SLA. Besides, negative transfer is ‘interference’ from the L1. L1 habits will cause errors in SLA.

History

The theoretical foundations for what became known as the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis were formulated in Robert Lado's Linguistics Across Cultures (1957). In this book, Lado claimed that "those elements which are similar to [the learner's] native language will be simple for him, and those elements that are different will be difficult". While this was not a novel suggestion, Lado was the first to provide a comprehensive theoretical treatment and to suggest a systematic set of technical procedures for the contrastive study of languages. This involved describing the languages (using structuralist linguistics), comparing them and predicting learning difficulties.

During the 1960s, there was a widespread enthusiasm with this technique, manifested in the contrastive descriptions of several European languages, many of which were sponsored by the Center for Applied Linguistics in...