Contrastive Analysis

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 Plan
Objectives By the end of this presentation trainee teachers are
required to:
1. Be familar with the field of contrastive Analysis.
2. Use the pedagogical implications of contrastive
analysis in class.
3. Be aware of some differences between Arabic
and English
4. Be familiar with how mother tongue interfers in
the second language

Outline
Introduction
1. Definition
2. Contrastive linguistics
3. Contrastive analysis Hypothesis
4. Assumptions of CAH
5. Contrastive analysis procedure
6. Pedagogical Implications
7. Contrastive Analysis between English and Arabic
8. Learning English and Mother Tongue Interference
case studies
Conclusion
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 introduction
• After the Second World War the interest in teaching
foreign languages increased in the USA.

• Many linguists were concerned with pedagogical

contrastive studies to predict learning difficulties on the
basis of comparing the native language with the target
foreign language , and also with the study of
bilingualism and language contact phenomena.

• It was believed that determining the similarities of the

two languages compared will make the process of
foreign language learning easier for the learner.

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 Emergence of the Contrastive
Linguistics
Contrastive linguistics is defined by
Johansson (2000) as « the systematic
comparison of two or more languages ,
with the aim of describing their similarities
and differences »

There are branches of contrastive

linguistics :

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1. Theory of translation:
 Establishing systematic equivalence
between two texts.
2. Error analysis:
 Identification of errors in FL students’
linguistic output and aims at accounting
for their occurrence.
3. Contrastive analysis:

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What is contrastive Analysis?
• It is a hypothesis founded by the pioneer of CA
field, Robert Lado (1957) in his book Linguistics
Across Cultures to account for the second
language acquisition in a systematic way by
comparing the first language system and culture
to the second language system and culture.

• He claimed that "those elements which are

similar to [the learner's] native language will be
simple for him, and those elements that are
different will be difficult.“

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 Assumptions of the C A H

Based on behaviorist and structuralist

theories, the basic assumption for this
hypothesis was:

the second language acquisition is hindred

due to the interference of the first
language system with the second
language system.

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 Weinrich defines Interference 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, i.e. as a result of languages in
contact”.
(1982:99)

 Odlin defines transfer as “the influence resulting

from the similarities and differences between the
target language and any other language that has
been previously (and perhaps imperfectly)
acquired” (1994: 301).
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• Interference refers to the influence of L1 on L2 in
negative sense, so it corresponds to negative
transfer, e.g. ‫انتهى من دراسته‬
• → He finished from his studies.
• Transfer usually refers to the influence of L1 on
L2 in both positive and negative way , e.g.
‫• أعطاه تفاحة‬
• → he gave him an apple
‫• يبحر في الشبكة العنكبوتية‬
• → he surfes in the internet.

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 Procedure
According to Lado (1957), Contrastive
analysis goes through four stages:

1. Description : linguist explicitly describes the

two languages under study.
2. Selection: he selects forms (rules,
structures ) for contrast.
3. Contrast : he compares and draws one
linguistic system on the other to specify the
relationship of one system with the other.
4. Prediction based on the analysis.

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 Pedagogical Implications
• CAH
• Determines the hierarchy of difficulty by which a
teacher or linguist could predict areas of difficulty
in the second language learning.

• Predicts and describe the patterns that will cause

difficulty in learning, and those that will not cause
difficulty.

• Highlights the interfering effects of the first

language on second language learning.

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I- Contrastive analysis: Arabic Vs English

Phonology:

English has about three times as many vowel sounds as Arabic,

so it is inevitable that beginning learners will fail to distinguish
between some of the words they hear, such
as ship / sheep or bad / bed, and will have difficulties saying such
words correctly.

Problems in pronouncing consonants include the inability to

produce the th sounds in words such as this and thin, the
swapping of /b/ and /p/ at the beginning of words, and the
subsitution of /f/ for /v/.
In Arabic word stress is regular. It is common, therefore,
for Arab learners to have difficulties with the seemingly
random nature of English stress patterns. For example, the
word yesterday is stressed on the first syllable
and tomorrow on the second.
Grammar - Verb/Tense:

Arabic has no verb to be in the present tense, and no

auxiliary do. Furthermore, there is a single present
tense in Arabic, as compared to English, which has
the simple and continuous forms. These differences
result in errors such as She good teacher, When you
come to Germany?, I flying to Egypt
tomorrow or Where he going?
Arabic does not make the distinction between
actions completed in the past with and without a
connection to the present. This leads to failure to use
the present perfect tense, as in I finished my work.
Can you check it?

There are no modal verbs in Arabic. This, for

example, leads to: From the possible that I am late. (I
may be late.) Another common mistake is to infer that
an auxiliary is needed and make mistakes such as: Do
I must do that?

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Prepositions, Adjectives, Pronouns
The indefinite article does not exist in Arabic, leading to its
omission when English requires it. There is a definite article but its
use is not identical with the use of the definite article in English.
Arab learners have problems with genitive constructions such
as the boy's dog. In Arabic this would be expressed as Dog the
boy, which is how such constructions may be conveyed into
English.
Adjectives in Arabic follow the noun they qualify. This
leads Arab beginners to making word order mistakes
in written or spoken English.

Arabic requires the inclusion of the pronoun in

relative clauses, unlike English, in which the pronoun
is omitted. This results in mistakes like:Where is the
pen which I gave it to you yesterday?

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II- Learning English and Mother Tongue
(Arabic)Interference
The interference of the mother tongue has always been a
major problem in teaching and learning English as a
foreign language.

Arab students who learn English as a foreign language

often make lexical, semantic and phonological errors
because of the interference of their native language
(Arabic).
Redundancy:
Arabic speaking students often resort to redundancy when
writing compositions and essays. They usually cannot
avoid using redundant patterns. The following sentences
are just a few common examples of redundancy.

* Mona lives alone by herself.

* The problem is very serious in the nature of it.
* The boss advanced forward the date of the
meeting.
Prepositions
Arabic speaking students sometimes use prepositions where
they are not supposed to:

While writing, they would normally use affect on enjoy with

or by etc. because such verbs normally take prepositions in
Arabic (phrasal verbs).

they often make errors in choosing the correct preposition.

They tend to say ashamed from composed from object on
blame on where of, of, to and for should be used respectively.
Students also tend to use before nouns which are not
normally preceded by this definite article, such as names
of most diseases and many other nouns. The reason for
this is that in Arabic such nouns are usually preceded by
the definite article. Notice the following examples:

My father suffers from the diabetes.

He was filled with the sadness.
He studies the music.
He left at the twilight.

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Syntax
The use of run-on sentences (i.e. sentences which are
incorrectly connected) is also common in compositions and
essays written by Arabic speaking students. Look at the
following examples:

We waited a long time, he didn't turn up.

My uncle and his family lived in the capital I knew I
could stay with them.

Teachers should be able to help their students avoid run-on

sentences by using appropriate connecting words or
punctuation.
 Other syntactical errors occur in using adjectives. The
fact that in Arabic, adjectives follow nouns makes it
difficult for learners of English to put adjectives in their
proper place. Therefore, students are likely to make
errors such as the following:

Tourists come to Egypt to enjoy the weather beautiful.

Men and women enjoy rights equal.
This is a book very interesting.

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They use an adjective plus a noun derived from the main
verb instead of using an adverb, thus they impose an
Arabic grammatical usage on English. The following
examples make this point clear:

The temperature rose a sharp rise (instead of: The

temperature rose sharply).
The singer performed a wonderful performance (instead
of: The singer performed wonderfully).
The prices have increased a gradual increase (instead
of: The prices have increased gradually).
use of countable and uncountable nouns
Another difficulty faced by Arabic speaking students is
related to the use of countable and uncountable nouns.
Many uncountable nouns in English such as information
money damage housework homework etc. are countable
in Arabic. Consequently, students often add an s to these
uncountable nouns and use plural instead of singular
forms of verbs. Following are some examples:

The informations I received were useful.

Housewives do a lot of houseworks.
The storm caused great damages.
Pronunciation
The absence of certain English sounds in Arabic like /p/
and /v/ causes real phonological problems for Arab
students who usually find it difficult to pronounce words
containing such sounds (This is not the case with students
in North Africa).

Thus words like park and van are likely to be pronounced

bark and fan. This detrimentally affects language learning
and it particularly impeded developing listening and
speaking skills.

These difficulties are by no means insurmountable.

Through giving students sufficient practice and drills and
exposing them to intensive listening activities, teachers
can attain good results.
Conclusion

To sum up, Arabic speaking students should be aware of

the fact that English and Arabic are quite different
languages. If students are taught how to think in English
and avoid doing a mental translation, their learning will
be greatly enhanced. Teachers certainly have a great role
to play in the process of acquainting and familiarizing
their students with the language areas that are likely to
hinder their language acquisition.
• All three disciplines of C L complement
each other:
Theory of
Contrastive
Translation
Analysis
Contrastive
Linguistics

Error
Analysis

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 The process of learning requires that CA
takes place BEFORE.
 The Error Analysis AFTER the learning
process.
 Contrastive analysis is inclusive because it
has applied, pedagocical outcomes.
 By identifiying similarities and differences,
CA PREDICTS possible areas of difficulty
for the SL learner.

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 References
Johansson, S. 2000. Contrastive Linguistics
and Corpora. University of Oslo, SPRIK reports
3:
ww.hf.uio.no/ilos/forskning/prosjekter/sprik/docs/
pdf/sj/johansson2.pdf

Johansson, S. 2007. Seeing through

multilingual corpora. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

 Robert Lado. 1957.Linguistics Across Cultures:

applied linguistics for language
teachers. University of Michigan Press, 1957
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 J. A. Bright and G.P. McGregor, 1982. Teaching
English as a Second Language. Longman Group
Limited.

 Myrna Knepler, 1990. Grammar with a Purpose.

Heinle & Heinle.

 Randolph Quirk and Sydney Greenbaum. 1985.

A University Grammar of English. Longman
Group Limited.

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