Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis Ling 307

CA and The European goal The North American goal

CA: The North American - Contrastive analysis is a way of comparing languages in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned in a second-language-learning situation. How? - a structure-by-structure comparison

Assumptions within the produced pedagogical material . Language is habit and that language learning involves the establishment of a new set of habits. . The major source of error in the production and/or reception of a second language is the native language. . One can account for errors by considering differences between the L1 and the L2. . The greater the differences, the more errors will occur. . What is dissimilar between two languages is what must be learned. . Difficulty and ease in learning is determined respectively by differences and similarities between the two languages in contrast.

Versions of CA Strong (a priori) (predictive) CA Weak (a posteriori) (explanatory)

Criticising CA Why CAH is demised? What does the concept of ‘difficulty’ mean in the CA tradition? Send your answers to: aljohanim@rcyci.edu.sa by tomorrow noon.

Stockwell, Bowen, and Martin (1965a, 1965b) hierarchy of difficulty

ERROR ANALYSIS

It is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make. Unlike contrastive analysis (in either its weak or strong form), the comparison made is between the errors a learner makes in producing the TL and the TL form itself. The publication of an article by Corder (1967) titled “The significance of learners’ errors.” Errors as windows onto systems; evidence of the state of a learner’s knowledge of the L2. They are not to be viewed solely as a product of imperfect learning; hence, they are not something for teachers to throw their hands up in the air about. Errors are not a reflection of faulty imitation. they are to be viewed as indications of a learner’s attempt to figure out some system, that is, to impose regularity on the language the learner is exposed to. They are evidence of an underlying rule- governed system. By focusing on errors, it was the beginning of the field of second language acquisition, which at this point is beginning to emerge as a field of interest not only for the pedagogical implications that may result from knowing about second language learning, but also because of the theoretical implications for fields such as psychology (in particular learning theory) and linguistics.

Errors vs. Mistakes Taken from the perspective of a learner who has created a grammatical system (an interlanguage), everything that forms part of that interlanguage system by definition belongs there. Hence, there can be no errors in that system. Errors are only errors with reference to some external norm (in this case the TL).

Conducting an Error Analysis Collect data Identify errors Classify errors (interlingual vs. intralingual errors) Quantify errors Analyse source Remediate

Criticising EA Total reliance on errors to the exclusion of other information 1974, Schachter: 50 compositions X 4 groups (Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese) - the use of English restrictive relative clauses (RC)

Criticising EA The determination of what an error is an error of. Reative clauses without relative markers? Constructions parallel to topic…comment constructions in the NL

Learner: The verb ‘discover’ is it transitive or intransitive? Criticising EA The determination of what an error is an error of. Passive construction Learner: The verb ‘discover’ is it transitive or intransitive?

Criticising EA The source of errors Dulay and Burtt (1974): ambiguous goofs, which is defined as: “those that can be categorized as either Interference-like Goofs or L1 Developmental Goofs” Interference-like goofs: hers pajamas (by a Spanish speaking child reflecting noun-adjective agreement) L1 developmental goofs: He took her teeths off (By Spanish-speaking child which is not found in Spanish L1, but is a typical overgeneralization error of English L1 children) Ambiguous error: Terina not can go (by Spanish speaker: can be interpreted as either an interference error because it reflects a Spanish structure, or as a developmental error because it is also found in English-speaking children learning their first language.)