The Habit of Perception in Foreign Language Learning: Insights into Error from Contrastive Analysis

Abstract

Languages signal different meaning distinctions through their grammatical units as well as through their vocabulary items. Many errors in a foreign language result not merely from inaccurately learned grammatical items or structures formed on the basis of the learner's native language. They may, instead, represent failure to understand the meaning distinctions indicated in the grammar of the new language that are not marked by a specific form in the native language, or failure to choose habitually the correct form to represent the meaning even when the distinction is understood. For example, the native speaker of English may know the concepts expressed by the Spanish subjunctive, yet fail to indicate them in every case by use of a subjunctive form when using Spanish. A task of the learner of a foreign language is thus to perceive the new meaning distinctions marked in the grammar of the language he is learning and then form the habit of indicating such distinctions when using the language. In other words, he must think in terms of new conceptual units. A task of the language teacher is to devise material to help the learner do this, so that habits of perception and indication of meaning distinctions as well as production of new grammatical forms and vocabulary items become automatic.