A NON-CONTRASTIVE APPROACH TO ERROR ANALYSIS ( Introduction )
The identification and analysis of interference between languages in contact has traditionally been a central aspect of the study of bilingualism. The intrusion of features of one language into another in the speech of bilinguals has been studied at the levels of phonology, morphology and syntax. The systems of the contact languages themselves have sometimes been contrasted, and an important outcome of contrastive studies has been the notion that they allow for prediction of the difficulties involved in acquiring a second language.
Those elements that are similar to the native (learner’s) native language will be simple for him, and those areas that are different will be difficult. In the last two decades language teaching has derived considerable impetus from the application of contrastive studies. Perhaps the least questioned and least questionable application of linguistics is the contribution of contrastive analysis. Especially in the teaching of languages for which no considerable and systematic teaching experience is available, contrastive analysis can highlight and predict the difficulties of the pupils.
Studies of second language acquisition, however, have tended to imply that contrastive analysis may be most predictive at the level of phonology, and least predictive at the syntactic level. A recent study of Spanish-English bilingualism, for example, state that many people assume, following logic that is easy to Read more detail… →
