THE ADVANTAGE OF EXPLOITING CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The rejection of contrastive analysis (CA) input in teaching and learning materials in North America in the seventies resulted from its close association with the stigmatized structural method and not from a demonstration of its inappropriateness on the basis of empirical evidence. Its status of persona non grata in the field was further emphasized in the eighties by the selective citing of findings of studies in Error Analysis by Dulay, Burt & Krashen (1982). Such findings were not supported by comparative studies of inductive and deductive approaches particularly in Europe which had demonstrated that the latter, based on the combination of CA and explanation had proven to be the most effective approach. Meanwhile, researchers in SLA have manifested renewed interest in negative transfer, now termed crosslinguistic influence, though their findings have as yet had no effect on teaching materials. There is, therefore, a need to reevaluate the effectiveness of CA input in language teaching. The study reported herein is a contribution to responding to this need. It hypothesizes that a deductive approach exploiting CA input will be more effective in minimizing error rates than an inductive one which does not take it into account. The findings support the hypothesis the implications of which are further explored.