CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

Contrastive analysis is the systematic study of a pair of languages with a view to identifying their structural differences and similarities. Contrastive analysis was used extensively in the field of second language acquisition in the 1960s and early 1970s, as a method of explaining why some features of a target language were more difficult to acquire than others.

Here are some kinds of contrastive analysis:

1. In Intralingual :

-          analysis of contrastive phonemes

-          Feature analysis of morph syntactic

-          Analysis of morphemes having grammatical meaning

-          Analysis of word order

-          Componential analysis of lexemes

-          Analysis of lexical relations

2. Cross-linguistic

-          Comparative analysis of morph syntactic systems

-          Comparative analysis of lexical semantics

-          Analysis of translational equivalence

-          Study of interference in foreign language learning

Contrastive analysis had:

1.      Psychological aspect : the psychological aspect was based on behaviorist learning theory.

2.      Linguistic aspect : was based on the structures of the linguistic.

           

           

            The theory that could be beneficial to second language learners came to be known as contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH). The CAH claimed that principal problem to second language acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second language system, and that scientific, structural analysis of the two language could produce information that would enable the linguist to predict the difficulties that the learner would encounter to describe accurately the two language, and to match those two descriptions against each other to determine valid contrasts or differences. The challenge of  the linguist was to describe the two languages and to point out the differences between them. Where there were differences, the learner would experience difficulty in learning the second language. Behaviorism contributed to the notion that human behavior is the sum of its smallest parts or components, and therefore, that language learning could be described as the acquisiton of  all these grammatical features (sounds, words, part of speech, sentence and etc). Moreover, human leraning theories highlighted interfering elements of learning, concluding that where no interferences could be predicted, no difficulty would be experienced since one could transfer positively all other items in language. The logical conclusion from the various psychological and linguistic assumptions was that second language learning basically involved the overcoming of the differences between the two linguistic systems-the native and target languages. The inference of this is that wherever there are significant differences between a pattern in the learner’s first language and second language, it can be predicted that the learner will experience difficulties.

             The CAH exist in a strong and a weak form (Wardaugh: 1970).

v  The strong form claims that all errors can be predicted by identifying the differences between the target language and the learner’s first language. As Lee notes, it stipulates that the prime cause, or even the sole cause, of difficulty and error in foreign language learning is interference coming from the learner’s native language.

v  The weak form claims only to be diagnostic, a contrastive analysis can used to identify which errors are the result of interference. Thus, according to the weak hypothesis, contrastive analysis needs to work hand in hand with error analysis. Implicit in the weak hypothesis is the assumption that not all errors are result of interference.

     

Most of contrastive analysis studies carried out based on the surface structure characteristics. The procedures followed were:

-          Description      : a formal description of the two language is made.

-          Selection         : certain items are selected for comparison

-          Comparison     :  the identification of areas of differences and similarity.

-          Prediction        : identifying which areas are likely to cause errors.

            Clifford Prator (1967), reformulated this hierarchy into six categories of difficulty. Prator's hierarchy is applicable to both grammat­ical and phonological features of language. The six categories, in ascending order of difficulty, are discussed below. The examples below are taken from Indonesian and English.

1. Level 0-Transfer

            No difference between the feature of first language and second language. The learner can simply transfer a sound, structure, or lexical item from the first language to the second language. Such transfer will be or no difficulty, the label of ‘level zero’ and is called positive transfer since the learning of this item facilities rather than inhibits the learning of the second language. Examples can be found in certain phonemes in both Indonesian and English (cardinal vowels, /s/, /z/, /m/, /n/, and structures or cognate words such as preposition, external, internal, so on.

2. Level 1-Coalescence

Two items in the first language become coalesced into essentially one item in the second language, called convergent phenomena. This requires that learners overlook a distinction they have grown accustomed to. For example, in Indonesian we know some words such as ‘memahami’ and ‘mengerti’ coalesce into ‘understand’ in English.

3. Level 2-Underdifferentiation

An item in the first language is absent in the second language. For example, English learner of Indonesian must learn to use the English auxiliary do to infer tense, possessive form wh-words (whose), and the appropriate use of words quantify (some, any, a few) with countable and uncountable nouns.

4. Level 3-Reointerpretation

An item that exists in the first language is given a new shape or appearance. This requires learners to reinterpret items in the second language. An item in the first language has a different distribution from the equivalent item in the target language. For example, the sound /ng/ in Bahasa Indonesia could occur initially, but in English it only occurs medially and finally.

5. Level 4-Overdifferentiation

No similarity between first language features and target language features. A new item in the target language, which is not at all similar to a native language item, must be learned. For example, the problem is in grammar structure. In English, we know about countable and uncountable nouns, but in Indonesian language we don’t use both of them. 

6. Level 5-Split

One item in the native language becomes two or more in the target language requiring the learner to make a new distinction, called divergent phenomena. For example, where Indonesian language is first language, the word ‘dia’ diverges into ‘she’ and ‘he’ in English.

writer note:

Wah, kalau pelajaran ini mah udah mulai rada ribet saya rasain. Tapi yah mesti saya hadapi, namanya juga nambah semester. In salah satu materi mata kuliah Learning and Instruction asuhan Mr. Batan. Dosenku yang satu ini terkenal kalem namun sangat-sangat telaten menilai mahasiswa. Jadi, hati-hati sama kekaleman Beliau yah...hehe....