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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. Linguistic contrasts were supposed to inevitably lead to interference: the structures of the native language interfered with the learning of the second (foreign) language. 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: contrastive 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 unlearning 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 instruments 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: structures 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 comparing English with some other language: Spanish, German, French, Italian, Danish, Polish, Finnish, etc. A list of books published in the wake of these projects s 19 e
