Contrastive Analysis

Nowadays when we are facing a group of social changes which demand us a lot of new knowledge, and even learn a second language; it is when we start to study the contrast of two elements. In thiscontrast, we found out a systematic study of a pair of languages, which it is focused on identify the differences o similarities between them, which it was called Contrastive Analysis, theory expressedby the linguistic Lado, R. (1957).

Contrastive Analysis has two central aims the first is to establish the inter-relationships of languages in order to create a linguistic family tree, and thesecond aim is to aid second language acquisition.

The idea of this theory came out from observing students learning a second language. Each student tended to repeat the same linguistic error, so itbelieved that the errors were caused by the student’s first language interfering with the second. This interference happened because the student uses the first language’s rules to the second language.There are some characteristics about this theory:

✓ Contrastive Analysis is based on the theoretical assumptions of behaviorism.

✓ If L2 acquisition is disturbed by the habits of yournative language, it is reasonable to focus on the differences between native and target language.

✓ In the US, contrastive analysis had a practical goal: If you recognize the differencesbetween your native language and the target language, you are able to overcome the linguistic habits of your native language that interfere with the habits of the target language.

✓ Fails todistinguish between the written rules of formal language and the unwritten rules of informal language, and it also fails to take into account differences between dialects.

✓ Most contrastive studiestake into account basic building blocks of languages such as phonics and vocabulary and also the structural natures of many languages including how they form sentences and change word forms.

✓...