Oldal 21 [21]
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
different from those of their native language. It was thought unnecessary to
practise the patterns that were the same.
CL claimed that all the errors committed by learners and all the difficulties
encountered in learning a foreign language were due to linguistic contrasts. Lin¬
guistic contrasts were supposed to inevitably lead to interference: the structures
of the native language interfered with the learning of the second (foreign) lan¬
guage. To overcome the difficulties of language learning and to avoid errors it was
necessary to identify the trouble spots, i.e. the contrasts, and to devise teaching
materials that focused on these contrasts. Consequently, CL held that the most
important element in foreign language teaching was the teaching material: con¬
trastive linguists argued that the efficiency of language learning can only be
improved by the use of “scientific learning materials” (Lado 1964). Scientific
learning materials meant textbooks compiled on the basis of contrastive analysis.
The learning theory associated with CL was behaviorism. According to the
latter, speaking a language was equal to exercising certain linguistic habits.
When you learn a foreign language, you have to unlearn your old habits and
acquire new habits (the ‘linguistic habits’ of L2). Interference from old habits
and errors due to old habits were supposed to be harmful, so they had to be
prevented by practising the correct patterns of L2. Errors were to be avoided
at all costs because they would reinforce the old (bad) habits of learners.
Although behaviorism is no longer regarded as a valid scientific theory, it
is worth giving consideration to the issue of learning new habits and unlearn¬
ing old ones. If you are used to a certain type of car and switch to a different
type where the controls are not exactly in the same place, you may at first look
for the controls in their ‘usual place’, i.e. where you had them in your former
car. That is, your old habits interfere with the habits required by the new car,
and this interference will take time to overcome. The disastrous consequences
of such interference have been attested in some air crashes, in which pilots
flying an unfamiliar type of aircraft became confused when familiar instru¬
ments and controls were in unfamiliar locations on the panel or in the cockpit
area. (The consequences of old habits interfering with new ones in foreign
language learning are usually less disastrous.)
As mentioned above, CA wanted to furnish ‘scientific learning materials’
for language teaching based on a comparison of L1 and L2. CA was claimed
to be able to predict areas of difficulty, and new habits were to be developed
only in those areas where the new language was different from the old: struc¬
tures that are the same do not have to be re-learned. Language learning is thus
equal to learning the differences, and difficulties can be expected where there
is a difference (Lado 1964).
From the 1960s on a number of contrastive projects started, mainly compar¬
ing English with some other language: Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dan¬
ish, Polish, Finnish, etc. A list of books published in the wake of these projects
s 19 e