Abstract
Throughout much of the history of research into second language acquisition (SLA), the role of learners’ first language (L1) in the second language (L2) learning has been a hotly debated issue. Different viewpoints are but a mere reflection of the different methodological shifts in English Language Teaching (ELT). I believe that L1 of the learner should be treated as an ally in the process of second language teaching and that it should be consciously used in the form of contrastive analysis instead of being avoided at all costs. In this paper, I recommend using the results of contrastive studies for explicit contrastive comparisons in the classroom. This paper begins with the discussion of the different viewpoints on the use of L1 in ELT. After this, some of the most-recognized ELT approaches and methods are discussed. Finally, it elucidates the role of contrastive analysis to facilitate the second language learning.
Introduction
The first language (L1) has long been considered the villain in second language (L2) learning, the major cause of a learner’s problems with the new language. Krashen (1981) suggests that the knowledge of the first language is a source of errors in learners’ L2 performance, so there should be an English environment in the English language classroom. Ellis (1984) argued that L1 should be used as little as possible. In recent years, however, most of the research endorses the use of the first language as it facilitates the learning process of the second language (Cummins 2007, García 2008 and Kang 2012). It has been pointed out that depending on the learners’ target language proficiency level, the extent of first language use in the classroom should be determined without affecting the learners’ opportunity for the exposure to the target language.
The use of first language as a linguistic resource in the classroom can encourage and enhance students’ positive attitude toward their first language, their belief in themselves and their capabilities to achieve higher learning in academic areas as well as second language and literacy. One of the main assumptions of my approach is that the first language of the learner is a very powerful factor in second- language acquisition and one which cannot be eliminated from the process of learning.
Intuitively, a good number of teachers feel partly based on their own experiences as learners of a second language, that the first language of the learner has an active and beneficial role to play in instructed second language acquisition/learning. Learners do not construct rules in a vacuum; rather they work with whatever information is at their disposal. This includes knowledge of their L1. The L1 can be viewed as a kind of ‘input from inside’ (Ellis, 2003). And yet, for some of us, there seems to be a generalised feeling of guilt that we are acting counter to the principles of good teaching when we use the learners’ first language as a tool to facilitate learning.
There is little doubt that what the language learner already knows is the first language, through which, more or less consciously, s/he tries to perceive and assimilate the elements of the target language. Utilizing and controlling this tendency instead of ignoring or fighting it will go a long way towards facilitating learning a second language as Weschler (1997) pointed out;
No matter how much a teacher wish it weren’t so, so-called ‘interference’ will always plague any learner who has ever leaned one language before another. The term itself has a negative connotation, but need not; better to think of the inevitable influence of the L1 on the L2 as a potential aid or tool. For those who advocate teaching the student to ‘ think directly’ in the target language, an interesting philosophical question would be, “Once having learned to think in one language, is it even possible not to think in that language?
The question then suggests itself whether it isn’t better to use this habitual transfer in some way rather than desperately try to fight and eradicate it, or even to deny its existence. Using contrastive analysis in the classroom would go a long way towards controlling this powerful tendency and making an ally of what has long been considered our greatest enemy. A classical experiment carried out by Lester (1932) with four groups of subjects differently instructed and made aware of the existence of interference from interpolated activities demonstrated very clearly that the subjects who were warned and shown where the interference would appear and who were also instructed how to fight it did incomparably better on the retesting of the learned material than the subjects who were not so instructed. It follows that warning the learner of the language interference, showing clearly and in advance where it may appear and what s/he should keep in mind to curb it, may greatly facilitate second language learning.
The first language of the learners has long been considered a lower language and a source of errors. This view is now being criticized because ESL/ EFL teachers have become aware of the significance of L1. Vivian Cook (2001) writes about the first language in ESL classes as “a door that has been firmly shut in language teaching for over a hundred years.” When students come to the classroom they don’t come out of the blue; they come “loaded” with their native language and a cultural heritage that nobody must deny or underestimate.
English teachers working with monolingual students at lower levels of English proficiency find prohibition of the first language practically impossible. So instead of looking at the students’ native language and cultural background as inferior or a source of errors, they must be used as a tool to maximize foreign language learning. The first language represents a powerful resource that can be used in a number of ways to enhance learning but it must always be used in a principled way.
When learners use first language structures in second language performance, they in effect plug lexical items (vocabulary) of the second language into the surface structure of the first language. In other words, they “think” in the first language and use words from the second language, much as one would handle word-for-word translation (Dulay, Burt and Krashen 1982). Students may feel frustrated and tend to believe that their identity is jeopardized if their first language is made degenerate. Further, the use of L1 frees learners from psychological barriers like embarrassment or nervousness and offers them mental comfort. It also creates a kind of rapport between the teacher and the learners and the learners are motivated to interact with the teacher independently. The first language provides a new dimension to the class and makes it pupil friendly and lively.
A Brief Review of Literature on the Use of L1
The cross-linguistic influence has had a rather unique history in second language acquisition, research and practice. It was presumed to be the only source of syntactic errors in adult second-language performance (Lado 1957). The monolingual principle refers to exclusive use of the target language as instructional language to enable learners to think in target language, with minimal interference from the first language (Howatt 1984). For years, English-only has been a default position of ELT pedagogy. Due to a variety of reasons, for example, a concern over students’ maximum exposure to English or a perceived lack of target language competence on the part of non-native teachers, or sometimes even sheer necessity when a teacher does not share the same linguistic background with learners, the monolingual principle has become a taken-for-granted dogma in language instruction. At policy level (Littlewood and Yu 2011), teachers are advised by national curricula to either “ban the L1 from classroom” or “minimize” it as “the L1 is not something to be utilized in teaching but to be set aside” (Cook 2001).
According to Harmer (2007b), a serious objection to the use (especially the over-use) of the students’ L1 is that it restricts the learners’ exposure to the target language. It is possible, for example, to make use of their first language when we give instructions, but this will reduce their exposure to a type of English which is ‘an ideal source of language for student acquisition’ (Harbord 1992). Indeed if the teacher is a principal source of useful comprehensible input, then the more time we spend speaking English, the better.
There is one typical situation where the use of the L1 seems counter-productive. This is when the teacher encourages the learners to use English in communicative speaking tasks, whose purpose, after all, is to give the learners opportunities to communicate in English. The teacher may understand the students’ natural inclination to communicate in the best way they can (i.e. in their first language), but it will be meaningless for the purpose of the activity that the teacher asks them to engage in (Harmer 2007b).
Agreeing with the idea of Harbord (1992) that English is ‘an ideal source of language for student acquisition’, Cook (2001) believes that learners of English should be exposed to an English using environment as much as possible. Krashen (1986), a pivotal advocate of the only-L2 use in the language classroom, continues this idea by stating that “comprehensible input is the only causative variable in second language acquisition”. He means, “Success in a foreign language can be attributed to input alone” (Brown 2000).
The supporters of the monolingual approach also indicate that the major impediment to L2 learning is interference from L1 knowledge (Cook, 2001). Krashen (1981), in his ‘Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning’, suggests that the first language knowledge is a source of errors in learners’ L2 performance. He also reports, “A high amount of first language influence is found in situations … where translation exercises are frequent”.
Despite this popular belief and common practice, avoidance of L1 in L2 classrooms, according to Cook (2001) “has no straightforward theoretical rationale”. On the contrary, empirical research in recent years has proved that the first language is the most important ally a foreign/second language can have. A number of authors have talked about the potential pedagogical benefits of carrying out contrastive analysis of grammars. Both Atkinson (1987) and Harbord (1992) present similar views. Atkinson proposes a simple explanation or demonstration of the rule followed by a translation exercise in those cases where L1 and L2 differ structurally.
Schweers (1999), in a report of the outcome of his research on the use of the first language in English classes, concludes that ‘a second language can be learned through raising awareness to the similarities and differences between the L1 and L2’. James (1980) makes reference to contrastive teaching as a valid technique to impart (students with) ‘packaged information, in a form easily assimilated as knowledge, about the intricacies of L2 systems’. The case is built stronger when we consider SLA research on the effect of formal and explicit instruction in the classroom. It is generally accepted that instruction that focuses on language form can both speed up the rate of language development and raise the ultimate level of the learners’ attainment (Willis (1996).
Atkinson (1987), in his discussion about the general advantages of native language use, claims that to let learners use their L1 is “a humanistic approach” which allows them to “say what they really want to say sometimes”. In terms of learner autonomy and evaluation, Ellis (2003) proposes that L1 allows students to give ongoing feedback about the course and their experiences of learning much more fluently than they will if they are only using English. “In the process of discovery and creation”, “the effect of the mother tongue on learning L2” is also “facilitatory”.
It is evident that non-native speakers account for the vast majority of teachers of English all over the world. These teachers’ English is usually not good enough to carry out English-only teaching in the classroom. For this reason, insistence on the monolingual approach may result in their reduced ability to communicate and consequently their reduced teaching performance. According to Nunan and Lamb (1996), in most foreign language contexts, using the students’ first language to give brief explanations of grammar and lexis, as well as for explaining procedures and routines, can greatly facilitate the management of learning.
The study of second language acquisition has been very much affected by changes and trends found not only in linguistics but also in the field of psychology. For example, earlier, the dominant school in American psychology was behaviourism. Behaviourist believed that only externally observable behaviour was psychologically relevant for the study and that internal mechanism responsible for that behaviour could not be investigated scientifically. The linguists influenced by behaviourists believed that Language itself consisted of externally conditioned habits. According to this approach, learning a second language consisted of the acquisition of a new set of habits. (Fries 1945) Learning a second language, therefore, meant overcoming a habit formed when the first language was acquired and replacing it, or at least overcoming its influence, when learning the second language. The set of habits that made up the first language was seen as interfering with the acquisition of a new set. Contrastive analysis is based on this school of thought.
Universal Grammar and the Role of L1 in Second Language Acquisition
Universal grammar (UG) consists of a set of unconscious constraints that let us decide whether a sentence is correctly formed. This mental grammar is not necessarily the same for all languages. But according to Chomskyian theorists, the process by which, in any given language, certain sentences are perceived as correct while others are not, is universal and independent of meaning. The UG may be said to consist of a set of limitations or parameters for language. Different languages set their parameters differently, thereby creating the characteristic grammar for that language.
The potential of this theory can be seen for investigating the process of second language acquisition. The acquisition of a second language is complicated by the fact that two languages are now confounding the picture, and it may be difficult to identify clearly the influence of first language, second language and UG constraints.
The L2 learner possesses a grammar of a first language incorporating the principles of Universal Grammar and specifying a particular set of values for its parameters. Two possibilities for L2 learning need to be considered: the learner might have access to Universal Grammar either directly or indirectly through the first language. In a way this rephrases the debate about the relationship of first and second language learning—whether L2 learners start from scratch, or depend upon their first language. Chomsky himself has queried the importance of the LI as a mediator: ‘While it may be true that “once some language is available, acquisition of others is relatively easy”, it nevertheless remains a very serious problem—not significantly different from the problem of explaining first language acquisition—to account for this fact’ (Chomsky 1969).
The question of whether learners have access to UG is, indirectly, related to the question of what role the L1 plays, as one route to UG is through the L1. It is not surprising, therefore, that UG researchers also remonstrate disagreement regarding the role L1 plays in activating UG principles and parameters, both in initial L2 state and in subsequent development. Wakabayashi (qtd in Ellis 2008) provided a useful summary of the main positions:
- The Minimal Trees Model
According to this model, the initial state of L2 acquisition is only partly dependent on the L1; that is, the learner has access to the lexical categories of the L1 together with associated properties. However learners do not have access to the functional properties of their L1 at this stage. Gradually learners master these categories because they can access them through UG, when they are triggered by input. L1 transfer in this model, therefore, is limited and disappears over time.
- The Weak Transfer Model
This model also proposes that L1 transfer is a partial phenomenon. like the Minimal Trees Model, it claims that L1 lexical categories are available at the start, but it also claims that L1 functional categories can be accessed
- The Full Transfer/Limited Access Model
This assumes that the initial state is entirely the product of L1 transfer and that subsequent parameter setting is impossible or difficult. However, this model does not claim that UG is not available. That is, learners do respond to the triggering effects of L2 input by constructing grammars that are compatible with UG principles.
- Full Transfer/Full Access Model
This model differs from the previous one in claiming that learners are able to restructure their initial grammar. This takes place when the L2 input demonstrates that to the learner that an L1 setting is incorrect and, as a result, the learner selects an alternative setting that is compatible with the input from those available in UG.
- Lexical Transfer/Lexical Learning Model
This proposes that the initial state is partial and emerges gradually in the course of development. L2 functional categories are acquired from the input. However, the L2 Lexicon is constructed by selectively transferring L1 lexical items, or by learning from input. Thus this model allocates a bigger role for input than most UG-based models.
All these models acknowledge that interlanguage grammars are constrained by UG-that is, they constitute full- or partial-access models. Al the models recognise that L1 transfer plays some kind of role in the initial state. However, they differ in how they view the extent and nature of the role of the L1 and also whether UG is seen as contributing, either via the L1 or independently, in subsequent L2 development. Hence, if we look into the matter through UG perspective, it becomes very clear that even UG researchers believe that L1 has a vital role to play especially at the initial stage of L2 learning.
Language Teaching Methods: A Historical Perspective
Now, let’s have a look at the role of L1 in ELT from the perspective of some of the major teaching methods and approaches.
Grammar-Translation Method
This is a combination of the activities of grammar and translation. Learners are first given explanations of individual points of grammar, and then sentences that exemplify these points. These sentences have to be translated from the target language back to the students’ L1 and vice versa. “The first language is maintained as the reference system in acquisition of the second language” (Stern 1983: 455)
The three principles or assumptions on which the Grammar-translation method is based are (Gautam 1988: 34):
(a) Translation interprets the words and phrases of the target language in the best possible manner and ensures comprehension of the vocabulary items, collocations and sentences.
(b) The foreign phraseology is best assimilated in this process of interpretation.
(c) The structures of the foreign language are best learned when compared and contrasted with those of the mother tongue.
A key feature of Grammar-Translation was that the students’ native language was employed as the standard medium of instruction which was used to explain new items and to draw comparisons between the foreign language and the student’s first language. Obviously, the language used in class is mostly the students’ mother tongue and the meaning of the target language is made clear by an equivalent translation in the students’ native language. This method has the advantage of being used with large classes who listen, copy rules and write out exercises and correct them from the board. The method makes a few demands on teachers. All he needs to do is to stick closely to the text-book and discuss it using the mother tongue where necessary. Moreover, most language learners still do the translation in their head at various stages somehow, and they can learn a lot about a foreign language by comparing parts of it with parts of their own mother tongue. However, Harmer (2007b) stated that a number of features of the grammar-translation method were worth commenting on. Firstly, language was treated at the level of sentences only, with little study, certainly at the early stages, of longer texts. Secondly, there was little consideration of the spoken language. Thirdly, accuracy was considered a necessity. Harmer (2007a) also commented that a total concentration on grammar-translation stopped learners from getting the kind of natural language input, which would help them acquire language (because they are always looking at L1 equivalents). The full attention to grammar-translation also failed to give students opportunities to activate their schemata. If they are always translating the language, they are not using the L2 communicatively.
Direct Method
The principal feature of the Direct Method is put by Stern (1983: 456) as follows:
“The direct Method is characterised, above all by the use of the target language as a means of instruction and communication in the language classroom, and by the avoidance of the use of the first language and of translation as a technique.”
Direct Method has one basic rule that is the students’ L1 should be avoided at all costs and students should learn to think in the L2 as soon as possible. The teacher should demonstrate, not explain or translate and it is desirable that students make a direct association between the target language and meaning (Davies, 2000).
The method has certain advantages. It provides ample opportunity to the student to listen to spoken language which, in fact, is one important factor in language learning. Since it lays stress on oral work, the student improves his speech habits and this helps him think in target language without the aid of mother tongue. The method is, no doubt, very useful for young learners in the beginning classes, but it does not work as well specially in higher classes. Then it lays more emphasis on speech training and other aspects of language learning like reading and writing do not receive due attention.
Audio-Lingual Method
After the Second World War, in forties and fifties, foreign language teachers and educational authorities became interested in Audio-lingual Method that indirectly grew out of a program developed by American linguists and psychologists for the US army during the Second World War. However, it really took shape when American Structural Linguistics and Behaviourist Psychology were adopted as the twin foundations of a “scientific” approach to FLT in the late 1950s.
This method capitalized on the suggestion that if the teacher described the grammatical patterns of English, he/she could get the students to repeat and learn them. According to Larsen-Freeman (1986), some of the Audio-Lingual principles are similar to those of the Direct Method. For instance, they believed that the first language and the target language had separate linguistic systems; hence, the two languages should be kept apart. The learners’ habits of L1 were thought to interfere with their attempts to master the target language. Therefore, only the L2 was used in the classroom, not the students’ mother tongue.
The main strengths of Audio- Lingual method are summed up as follows:
- Audio-lingual teaching materials are more scientifically and systematically designed than most one-author texts.
- Student motivation which is very important in learning is very high in audio-lingual classes. Students enjoy learning to use the target language.
In recent years there has been an increasing amount of criticism of the behaviourist assumption underlying audio-lingual theory of language learning and teaching as some teachers believe that drills are inherently unnatural, contrived examples of the use of language. As a result of drills, the students fail to use the memorized materials in contexts other than those in which they have learnt them.
Community Language Learning
Community Language Learning (CLL) is the name of a method developed by Charles A. Curran, who was a specialist in counselling at Lyola University, Chicago. Curran’s experience led him to conclude that the psychological counselling techniques could be applied to learning in general. In CLL, teacher takes on the role of a counsellor and treats the learners as his clients. This means that teachers should consider not only their students’ feelings and intellect, but also the relationship among the students’ physical reactions, their instinctive protective reactions and their desire to learn. The following extract is an observation of a Community Language Learning lesson:
The learners sit in a circle, with the teacher standing outside it. Any learner can volunteer to ask a question or make a statement (in the L1 at beginner level). The teacher repeats this question or statement in the L2 as many times as the learner wishes to hear it. Then the learner says it, recording it onto a cassette. Another learner responds to the question or statement (again in the L1 at beginner level), listens to the teacher repeating the response in the L2, and records it onto the cassette. In this way, a conversation in the L2 among the learners is slowly built up on the cassette. The teacher then replays the whole recording and the learners listen to their ‘conversation’. (Davies, 2000, p. 192)
The above description illustrates a remarkable feature of the Community Language Learning method – the learners, not the teacher and not the institution; create the syllabus according to their own interests and concerns. In this method, the learners’ native language was used to make the meaning clear. According to Nguyen (2005), instructions in Community Language Learning class and sessions during which the learners expressed their feelings were conducted in their L1. It was also believed that students would feel more secure when they understood everything, and this security was initially enhanced by using their first language. Therefore, literal L1 equivalents were given to the target language words where possible.
Natural Approach
During the second half of the nineteenth century, several scholars criticized the Grammar-Translation method and proposed their own alternatives for foreign language instruction. These alternative approaches paid much greater attention to the avoidance of the learners’ native language use in TEFL. For example, proponents of the “Natural Approach”, developed by Tracy Terrell in the USA from the late 1970s, later in collaboration with Stephen Krashen, argued that a foreign language could be taught without translation or the use of the learner’s mother tongue if meaning was conveyed directly through demonstration and action (Nunan & Lamb, 1996).Richards and Rodgers (1986) said that a language could be taught best by using it naturally and actively in the classroom rather than by using analytical procedures that focus on translation of grammar rules. Teachers had to encourage direct and spontaneous use of the foreign language in the classroom and learners would then be able to induce rules of grammar. Known words could be used to teach new vocabulary, using mime, demonstration, and pictures.
However, it is not true that the learners’ L1 was completely avoided in a Natural Approach lesson. The teacher helps her students to understand her by using pictures and occasional words in the students’ native language. In many ways, the Natural Approach is similar to the Direct Method. The only difference is that in the Natural Approach learners are permitted to use their L1 along with the target language as they respond to their teacher.
Communicative Language Teaching
Since the early 1970s, communicative movement has had an influential role in foreign language teaching. There is nothing new about the idea that communicative ability is the goal of foreign language teaching. According to Richards and Rodgers (1986), the communicative movement aimed to move away from grammar to focus on language as communication.
It places great emphasis on helping students use the target language in a variety of context and also great emphasis on learning language functions. There are five basic teaching characteristics of CA:
1. Teach learners to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. Use authentic situations and texts as way to teach the target language.
- Create or use opportunity for the learner to focus, not only on language, but also on Learning Management process.
- Use learner’s own experiences as elements of learning in the teaching environment.
- Use links between the teaching environment and the outside world as a link and or tool to provide language learning and activities.
CA can include any teaching practice that helps students develop their communicative competence using an authentic context as long as it is an acceptable and beneficial form of instruction.
Larsen-Freeman comments on the role of students´ mother tongue in Communicative Language Teaching:
Judicious use of the student´s native language is permitted in CLT. However, whenever possible, the target language should be used not only during communicative activities, but also for explaining the activities to students or in assigning homework. The students learn from these classroom management exchanges, too, and realize that the target language is a vehicle for communication, not just an object to be studied.
Communicative Language Teaching still continues as is seen in many course books and teaching resources based on its principles. It has also influenced other language teaching approaches and methods that apply a similar philosophy of language teaching.
Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive linguistics developed in the 1850s in America out of the behaviourist inclined second-language learning theories and foreign language programmes of the time. The notion of ‘transfer’ and ‘interference’ were borrowed from psychological learning theory and applied to second language learning.
Although several prominent linguists and pioneers in the field of target language pedagogy, including Henry Sweet, Harold Palmer and Otto Jesperson, were well aware of the ‘pull of the mother tongue’ in learning a target language, it was Charles C. Fries (1945) who firmly established contrastive linguistic analysis as an integral component of the methodology of target language teaching. He declared that:
The most effective materials (for foreign language teaching) are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner.
Fries may be said to have issued the charter for modern contrastive analysis. The challenge was taken up by Lado, whose work ‘Linguistics across cultures’ (1957) soon became a classic field manual for practical contrastive studies. The Chomskyan revolution in linguistics gave a fresh impetus to contrastive analysis, not only making it possible for the comparisons to be more explicit and precise, but also giving it what seemed to be a more solid theoretical foundation by claiming the existence of ‘language universals’.
The principal role of cross linguistic referencing becomes consciousness raising. Rutherford (1987), in a chapter dedicated exclusively to the central role of consciousness raising in language learning, holds that ‘successful learning comes about only when what is to be learned can be meaningfully related to something that is already known’. I am convinced that, from a psychological point of view, it cannot be avoided and that, from a pedagogic point of view, it can facilitate learning if used wisely and deliberately. I completely agree with D P Ausubelk (qtd in Marton 178), one of the cognitive psychologists, who condensed all of his educational research and thinking in the following statement:
If I had to reduce all of educational psychology to just one principle, I would say this: The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.
Current views on pedagogical applications of contrastive studies are marked by disappointment and pessimism. The pendulum has swung to the other extreme, which has always been so characteristic of developments in language teaching methods, so that contrastive studies, originally regarded as a panacea for all the problems in language teaching, are now treated by some educators as of no pedagogic use at all. A typical representative of the latter attitude is Leonard Newmark (1970: 225-226), who says, ‘……..the cure for interference is simply the cure for ignorance: learning. There is no particular nee to combat the intrusion of the learner’s native language – the explicit or implicit justification for the contrastive analysis that applied linguists have been claiming to be necessary for planning language teaching courses.’
According to these opponents of contrastive analysis , its application to the construction of teaching materials may be even harmful, because it may lead to overemphasizing certain elements in the target language, and, consequently, to learning some fragments of that language only, instead of the whole system.
Contrastive Grammar
Our first aim should be the construction of pedagogical contrastive grammars that could be used by the largest possible number of people interested in language teaching and learning. Accordingly, such grammars must be simple and easily readable and should not contain too many technicalities or irrelevant detail. While being fairly comprehensive, they should, nevertheless, be focussed on the greatest difficulties in the target language which should be established partly empirically on the basis of our teaching experience and error analysis.
We can say that pedagogical contrastive grammar, the construction of which is the ultimate purpose of contrastive studies, will be an aid in the process of learning and teaching foreign languages, although by no means can it be regarded as a sort of pedagogical panacea. Its usefulness will certainly be limited but still great enough to justify a considerable expenditure of time and effort spent on its preparation. A grammar of this kind can be expected to be widely used by the following types of individuals involved in language teaching: the teacher, the learner and the material writer.
- For the foreign-language teacher it will systematize and explain his pedagogical experience, and thus enable him to use it to a better advantage. It may be conceived as a reference book for the teacher, of the same importance as a dictionary or a descriptive grammar of the target language. The contrastive grammar will also help the teacher to explain the most essential structural differences between the two languages to his students in a clear and systematic way
- The foreign-language learner will be able to use the contrastive grammar also, as one of the reference books for language learning, whenever he really needs it.
- The material writer will find in the contrastive grammar a readymade inventory of at least some of the special tasks and problems in language teaching. The same applies to a person responsible for the syllabus and the organization of a language course
Now finally a few words about how I envisage the use of contrastive studies in the classroom.
- First of all, the teacher should show the similarities and differences in usage between the two languages.
- S/He should set up limits for drawing analogies.
- S/He should warn about the areas of possible negative transfer and confusion.
All of this should be done before the practising of the given structure so that habits are formed on a conscious, cognitive basis. Frequent use of translation as a perfect contrastive technique for learning grammatical structures would be one of the characteristics of this approach, although it would not become the only or even the main technique.
The Rationale for Contrastive Analysis
Jackson (1981) suggested that the rationale for undertaking contrastive studies comes mainly from three sources:
(a) Practical experience of foreign language teachers
Every experienced foreign language teacher knows that a substantial number of persistent mistakes made by students can be traced to the ‘pull of the mother tongue’. Such ‘carry overs’ seem to result in the largest number of deviant sentences in areas where the structures of the native language and the target language differ the most.
(b) Studies of language contact in bilingual situations
Students of language contact have also noted the phenomenon of ‘interference’ which Weinreich defines as ‘those instances of deviation from the norms of either language which occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language’
(c) Theory of learning
The third source that has been considered to support the contrastive analysis hypothesis is learning theory—- in particular, the theory of transfer. In its simplest form transfer refers to the hypothesis that the learning of a task is either facilitated (positive transfer) or impeded (negative transfer) by the previous learning of another task, depending on, among other things, the degree of similarity or difference obtaining between the two tasks.
5.1.2 Contrastive Analysis: Its Pedagogic Claims
Various claims have been made as to the potential role of contrastive analysis in target language teaching. Hall (1968) (qtd in Sridhar 212) asserts that the era of the uniform, standard text book for all learners of a target language irrespective of their language background is over: the structure of the text book—selection of teaching items, degree of emphasis, kinds of practice drills, nature of exposition, etc—should be geared to the native language of the learner. It is also claimed (by Lado, 1957) that the results of contrastive analysis provide the ideal criteria for selecting testing items. It is generally agreed that basing teaching material on the result of contrastive studies necessarily entails a more ‘mentalistic’ technique of teaching——explicit presentations of points of contrast and similarity with the native language, involving an analytical, cognitive activity (Jakobovits 1969).
George (1972) estimates that approximately one third of all errors made by target language learners can be traced to native language interference, therefore Stockwell (1968) (qtd in Sridhar 212) says, as long as one of the variables that contributes to success or failure in language learning is the conflict between linguistic systems, contrastive analysis has a place in target language methodology.
Conclusion
After having a look at the use of first language, contrastive analysis and some of the most adopted approaches and methods of English language teaching (ELT), we can easily gauge the fact that the first language of the learner is an indispensable resource in ELT and we cannot use it effectively without the help of contrastive analysis. As a teacher of English as a second language at the tertiary level, I believe that the first language of the learner should be treated as an ally in the process of second language teaching and that it should be consciously used instead of being ignored and avoided at all costs. I am convinced that, from a psychological point of view, it cannot be avoided and that, from a pedagogic point of view, it can facilitate learning if used wisely and deliberately.
We may conclude with a remark that pessimism concerning the pedagogical application of contrastive studies is certainly unwarranted. In this study, the argument is: if students are trained to contrast L1 and L2 grammars, and differences as well as similarities are made explicit, chances are such explicit knowledge will enable learners to notice the ‘gap’ between their inner grammars and the target language and ultimately, through constant hypothesis testing, achieve higher levels of grammatical as well as communicative competence.
References
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Bio Note
Shivani is working as Assistant Professor in English at Post Graduate Govt. College for Girls, Chandigarh (India). She is pursuing PhD from Panjab University, Chandigarh. She has been teaching English at tertiary level for the last eight years. Her main areas of interest are Second Language Acquisition and English Language Teaching.