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Summary The Role of Native Language
Summary The Role of Native Language
Summary The Role of Native Language
Students:
Mangia bene il bambino? eats well the baby Positive transfer Come bien el nio? eats well the baby Negative transfer Eats well the baby? Interference: retroactive inhibitionwhere learning acts back on previously learned material, causing someone to forget (language loss). proactive inhibitionwhere a series of responses already learned tends to appear in situations where a new set is required. Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis Lado detailed, one does a structure-by-structure comparison of the sound system, morphological system, syntactic system, and even the cultural system of two languages for the purpose of discovering similarities and differences. Those structures that are similar will be easy to learn because they will be transferred and may function satisfactorily in the foreign language. Those structures that are different will be difficult because when transferred they will not function satisfactorily in the foreign language and will therefore have to be changed. (Lado, 1957, p. 59) Contrastive analysis is based on a theory of language that claims that language is habit and that language learning involves the establishment of a new set of habits. The major source of error in the production and/or reception of a second language is the native language. What one has to do in learning a second language is learn the differences. Similarities can be safely ignored as no new learning is involved. In other words, what is dissimilar between two languages is what must be learned.
There were two positions that developed with regard to the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) framework. These were known as the strong versus weak view. In the strong view, it was maintained that one could make predictions about learning and hence about the success of language-teaching materials based on a comparison between two languages. The weak version starts with an analysis of learners recurring errors. In other words, it begins with what learners do and then attempts to account for those errors on the basis of NLTL differences. 2
Error Analysis It is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make. Errors provide windows onto a systemthat is, evidence of the state of a learners knowledge of the L2. They are to be viewed as indications of a learners attempt to figure out some system, that is, to impose regularity on the language the learner is exposed to. They are evidence of an underlying rule governed system.
Conducting an error analysis Collect data. Although this is typically done with written data, oral data can also serve as a base. Identify errors. What is the error (e.g., incorrect sequence of tenses, wrong verb form, singular verb form with plural subject)? Classify errors. Is it an error of agreement? Is it an error in irregular verbs? Quantify errors. How many errors of agreement occur? How many irregular verb form errors occur? Analyze source. Remediate. Based on the kind and frequency of an error type, pedagogical intervention is carried out.
Errors can be of two types. Interlingual errors: those which can be attributed to the NL (i.e., they involve crosslinguistic comparisons). Intralingual errors: those that are due to the language being learned, independent of the NL