Contrastive Analysis

Development of the Theory

Originally developed in the 1940s and 1950s, the contrastive analysis hypothesis was based on structural linguistics as well as behavioral psychology, the predominant theories of language and learning at the time. Charles Fries originally presented contrastive analysis in 1945. Later, Robert Lado, of Georgetown University, presented the contrastive analysis hypothesis. This hypothesis stems from the view of learning as the development of a new set of behaviors or habits. Language was defined in terms of language structures at the level of the sound system (phonology), the word or lexicon (morphology), and the sentence (syntax or grammar). With the structural view of language and the behavioral view of learning, the task for practitioners was to determine which habits needed to be “undone” and which new habits needed to be formed in order to be successful in learning a second language.

The core concept of contrastive analysis is that the main source of errors and difficulty in learning the L2 occur as a result of interference, the transferring of habits from the native language to the target language. The hypothesis states that these difficulties stem from the differences that exist between languages. Given the behaviorist theory of learning, the greater the differences, the greater the learning difficulties will be. The most important task of those conducting contrastive analysis is to compare aspects of the two languages in order to predict the difficulties and errors that will occur in L2 learning. Having compared given aspects of the two languages, the instructor can ignore what is common to them, as that part of learning the two languages will proceed without much difficulty. The instructor is expected to teach and develop teaching materials that focus on the areas of difference. Those differences are then practiced through extensive repetition, the hallmark of behaviorist learning.

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