Academic literature on the topic 'Fundamental theories : contrastive analysis, Error analysis and Interlanguage'

Second language acquisition (SLA) generates and tests the theories concerning the acquisition of languages other than first language (L1) in different contexts. Even if SLA is a nascent discipline, its history is remarkable and helpful to seek the answers to the questions that researchers are raising in the field of second language or foreign language. Based on this context, this article aims to recount the history of the burgeoning discipline that heavily draws from numerous disciplines like linguistics, psychology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and so on. To achieve the objective, document analysis method has been used. The analysis and interpretation of the available documents exhibit that the traces of SLA were observed in the studies that address the issue of language transfer. Specifically, the diachronic study proves that the development of the discipline has undergone three evolving phases like background, formative, and developmental. The background phase caters for behaviourism, contrastive analysis hypothesis, and the attacks on the fundamental premises of behaviourism. The formative phase deals with Chomsky’s revolutionary steps, error analysis, interlanguane theory, morpheme order studies, and the Krashen’s monitor model that opened up the avenues for further studies of SLA. The developmental phase recounts various studies that have consolidated SLA as a separate discipline.

The present study delved into the impact of students' L1 (Arabic) morphosyntactic system on their L2 writing skills; the influence of Arabic socio-cultural and educational context (where students learn L2) on students’ writing; students’ attitude towards L2 writing and EFL teachers’ perceptions and interpretations of students' writing difficulties. The study was conducted in 8 public higher education institutions in Oman. The participants of the study were 598 Omani EFL students who studied at The General Foundation Program and 54 EFL teachers. The study was underpinned by two theories: transfer of learning theory (Thorndike & Woodworth, 1901) and interlanguage theory (Selinker, 1972). The conceptual framework was arrived at by employing two models, contrastive analysis (CA) and error analysis (EA). A mixed-methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data employing a questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and a writing test (essay writing). The findings revealed that students’ intralingual (L2 rules) errors were larger than their interlingual (L1 interference) errors. It was also found that students had a positive attitude towards L2 learning. Further, the teachers’ interviews confirmed that teachers were cognizant of students’ writing errors but they could not identify and determine the sources of those errors.

The concept that learners' first language (L1) influences their second language (L2) acquisition and production is employed in a variety of studies on English language learners.However, so far, no research has been carried out on the Armenian learners of English. The fundamental question that this paper tries to answer is whether these theories apply for Armenian learners too, considering the specific features of the Armenian language. To this end I have identified the use pattern of the passive voice by Armenian learners in contrast to native speakers, aiming at revealing the influence of the Armenian language. The research is based on the contrastive interlanguage analysis of native speakers’ corpora (LOCNESS) and Armenian learners’ corpora (compiled by me in accordance with ICLE guidelines). The results yielded suggest that the pattern of Armenian learners’ use of the passive voice is drastically different from the native ones’ and that their L1 did have an impact on their production of passive voice.

Linguistic and cultural differences between Thai and English underlie expected errors through both formal and informal observations of language productions in the Thai context. In a Thai-to-English translation task by 138 participants, contrastive analysis is used to analyze the structural similarities and differences between the source language and the target language together with error analysis and interlanguage theories (Spolsky, 1979; Lennon, 2008; Gass & Selinker, 2008; Kantè, 2014; Kantè, 2015) attempting to investigate the interlanguage system of the participants while dealing with the task in hand. With the use of formal cooperative learning groups under the Cooperative Language Learning method (Richards & Rodgers, 2001: 192-201) outside of the classroom for data collection, this 7-week long group work project of short story translation was assigned to third year students to see types of errors produced. The qualitative data indicate sources of L2 productions including direct translation, a lack of knowledge on grammatical features of lexical choices, overgeneralization of and innovations in culture-specific items, and rare exposure to target choices. The findings further suggest that the participants were prone to rely heavily on online translation machines or software and either online or printed dictionaries where all possible choices are provided without looking more carefully at which choices are appropriate for a certain context. In addition, for a task outside of the classroom in the digital age with easy online accessibility and distant teachers’ supervision, the ethical issue on plagiarism is to be intensively emphasized.

It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition. The cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspective on the nature of language and language learning is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients. The present study has two goals. First, it aims at investigating advanced students’ metalinguistic ability in solving multidimensional grammatical problems. Second, it is, also, an attempt to highlight the role of focus on form instructions in shaping L2 learners’ performance. The subjects of the present study were forty Egyptian students who were in their fourth year of academic study in the Department of English and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Menufia University, Egypt. The instrument of this study consisted of (1) pre-test; (2) post-test; and (3) individual interviews. Two tasks were used: (1) “Sentence Completion” task, and (2) “Error Recognition and Correction” task. In the first task, a list of 15 incomplete sentences was given to the subjects who were asked to choose the word or phrase to complete the sentence. The focus, in this task, was on the meaning of the sentence rather than the form, although accurate understanding of the formal properties of language is a must. In the second task, students were asked to detect the word or phrase that must be changed in order for the sentence to be correct. A list of 25 sentences was given to the subjects who worked on this task twice. In the pre-test, no word or phrase was underlined; it is an example of the unfocused correction type. In the post-test, the same sentences were given to the subjects, with four words underlined, and marked (A), (B), (C) and (D). It is an example of the focused correction type. Finally, students were interviewed to explain and comment on their performance in the previous tasks. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results were obtained and conclusions were made.It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition. A correct understanding of these processes and mechanisms is a prerequisite for an adequate didactic approach. Relatedly, Morley (1987) points out that during the last twenty years ideas about language learning and language teaching have been changing in some very fundamental ways. Significant developments in perspectives on the nature of second language learning processes have had a marked effect on language pedagogyThe cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspectives on the nature of language and language learning in recent years is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients. Accordingly, the focus of second language study has shifted from a prominence of contrastive analysis in the 1940s and 1950s and error analysis in the 60s and 70s to interlanguage analysis in the 70s and 80s. Interlanguage analysis is marked today by “a variety of investigations looking at diverse aspects of learner language” (Morley, 1987: 16). In this connection, Gass (1983: 273) points out that “it is widely accepted that the language of second language learners, what Selinker (1972 has called ‘interlanguage’ or what (Gass, 1983) has called ‘Learner-language’ is a system in its own right.” To understand such a system, we should focus on discovering how second language (L2) learners evaluate and correct their own or other people’s utterances, an issue that will be explored in the present study. In other words, the major point of interest here is L2 learners’ linguistic intuitions and the role of focus on form instruction in making grammaticality judgments.

Nowadays, the studies on the language transfer are more concerning the impact of Chinese language on English learning. Very few of them are on the phenomenon of negative transfer of Tibetan language to the Tibetan students’ English learning under the trilingual(TIbetan, Chinese and English) environment. The author had a detailed analysis to the Tibetan students’ writing composition on the basis of language tranfer theories such as markedness, interlanguage hyposthesis, and etc. And figure out the main grammatical errors in their compositions through the method of Error Analysis. Contrastive Analysis is also used to have comparison among the Tibetan, Chinsed and English, and individual interview as well, the reasons for the grammatical errors are figured out. The major findings of this research are as follows: The grammatical errors emerged in the Tibetan English major students’ composition writing is in many fields, which includes omission, collocation, single and plural form of noun, subject - predicate concord, negative , possessive , relative clause and inverted sentence; Here is the reason for these grammatical errors: various thinking modes, in short of comparisons among the three languages and inadequate input. The methods can be applied to resolve are: language instructors should intsruct language learners propers through having comparison between the three languages and more importantly, strengthenging the students’ comprehensible and adequate input the learner langauge.

Cette recherche se concentre sur les erreurs globales relevées dans les corpus collectés auprès des apprenantsdu français de l’université d’Arsi. À travers une étude comparative, l'objectif principal de cette recherche est,d'une part, d'examiner si les erreurs constatées sont dues à l'interférence des langues premières (L1) et,d'autre part, de déterminer si ces erreurs apparaissent à chaque niveau linguistique. Il s'agit donc d'évaluer sicette interférence affecte l'acquisition de la langue cible au niveau phonétique, morphologique et syntaxique.Au contexte de la didactique, certaines stratégies d'enseignement, introduites par un certain nombred'auteurs, sont proposées afin d’enseigner la production des sons uniques, la formation et l’assemblage desmots
This research focuses on global errors found in corpora collected from learners of French at the University ofArsi. Through a comparative study, the main aim of this research is, on the one hand, to examine whether theerrors noted are due to interference from the first languages (L1) and, on the other, to determine whetherthese errors appear at each linguistic level. The aim is therefore to assess whether this interference affects theacquisition of the target language at the phonetic, morphological and syntactic levels. In the context ofdidactics, certain teaching strategies, introduced by certain authors, are proposed to teach the production ofsingle sounds, word formation and word