Towards a course in contrastive analysis
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Abstract
There can be no question that teachers must be well-informed both about the structure of the languages they are teaching and about language in general; it is our firm belief that contrastive analysis is the best tool for this purpose. Whether or not CA is useful as a methodology in a given language teaching context is a totally separate question (and one that will not be treated here) from its utility in training teachers to understand the workings of language. Unfortunately, most textbook writers and language teachers alike continue to be ignorant of ANY applications of linguistics to language teaching. In the majority of foreign language classrooms in both secondary schools and colleges, while there is little conscious methodology of any sort, there is much sporadic and non-systematic implicit contrastive grammatical instruction, much of it based on the false generalization of normative grammar, and not infrequently on blatant absurdities. As Hall (1968) aptly puts it, the 'traditional lore' that passes for grammar presents the problem that contrastive grammatical analysis must have as its task not simply to contrast the native and TL but must go through at least a threefold process: it must first contrast normative school grammars with the way English actually works and then contrast this, in turn, with the way the TL works, again, opposed to what the language's school texts say about it.
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