Essay On Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive analysis involves the differential description of two languages, which involves the analysis of the two languages and its comparison, in fields such as phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistic usage. Contrastive analysis contrasts the student´s native language and the language to be learned. On the one hand, Mackey (1967: 80) states that Contrastive analysis is the “comparison of equivalent portions of two languages for the purpose of isolating the problems that speakers of one language will have in acquiring the other”. On the other hand, Bowen (1967: 34) states that contrastive analysis “has organized the comparison of languages, has sharpened the forms and perspective of the resulting descriptive statements, so they can be truly useful to the language teacher, who has not always been convinced that he needs the linguist´s help”. Later on, James (1980) asserts that CA involves two steps: description and comparison. They should be done in this order, CA should be done as a description of L1 and L2

It is also important to know how to pronounce them properly and in which grammatical structures are useful. We should not forget about the use of that word in context because as it happens with False Friends, depending on the context, they can infer the wrong meaning. Languages, like words, are always better learned in context, the context shows how a word is used and the purpose to which it is put. It is usually necessary to know how new forms are pronounced and written and what their role in grammar is. Sometimes teachers think that their students already know certain words from past courses but certainly they do not, so teachers must make sure that they know what their students know before introducing new items, because sometimes they will discover that there are a lot of new items for the