Under this sub unit, we will discuss one important psychological concept in language teaching and that is interference. Interference will be discussed in relation to contrastive analysis and error analysis.
3.3.3.1 Transfer and Interference
Interference is a fairly common concept in learning. It refers to a situation where what is known prevents one from properly acquiring a similar but new thing. In second language learning, it has been discovered that your students‟ native language which he has known
and mastered usually intrudes into the second language which he is learning but has not mastered. Second language interference or intrusion is an unconscious process. The learner, without intending it, unconsciously and uncontrollably discovers that his L1 patterns show in the process of acquiring the L2system. To the second
language learner, interference is a facility because it enables him to communicate or learn the second language. In other words, interference enables the learner to scale the barrier in his learning the second language. To you, the second language teacher, barrier breaking as interference may be to the learner, it distorts the second language structure and results in errors. At the
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psycholinguistic level, interference is based on the concept of transfer of one set of language and culture skills into another.
This is succinctly expressed by Lado (1957):
Individuals tend to transfer the forms and meanings and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language–both productively when attempting to grasp and understand the language and receptively when trying to understand the language and act in the culture as practiced by the natives.
Transfer produces interference and interference results in errors.
While transfer results in interference, it is not every transferred item that results in errors. Some are proactive. To behaviourist
psychology, transfer is negative if it produces a negative, that if it is retroactive but proactive if it aids new learning. According to Lado (1968), it is the kind of transfer that produces a negative effect that should be classified as interference and it is this kind of interference that should interest you as a language teacher because it is retroactive. This position is typically psycholinguistically behaviourist. It has not given any consideration to transfer that aids new learning. This is the major criticism of behaviourist view of transfer and interference. As a language teacher, you should be interested in factors that promote new learning and those which impede it.
3.3.3.2 Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive analysis evolved from the concept that whenever two
languages are in contact, there is bound to be a mutual transfer of items between them. In other words, when a learner learns second language, there is bound to be a transfer of the learner‟s language
structures into those of the second language. Behaviourist psychology accepts the fact that such elements so transferred will have positive and negative effects on the L2, but that it is only those that have negative effects that we should bother about and that by comparing and contrasting the linguistic levels of the
various systems of the learner‟s L1 and L2, we should on the basis of the similarities and differences, able to predict potential
learning difficulties for the L2 learner. Thus, contrastive linguistics is one of the tools in your hand to use in solving your students‟ second language learning difficulty. You could go about
CA in two ways, the traditional approach of making CA predict
errors or go the explanatory way to make CA explain rather than predict second language errors. Traditionally, the concern of contrastive analysis is to compare and contrast a particular aspect of your students‟ L1 with a corresponding aspect of his L2 you are teaching him on order to predict the potential difficulties he will
have in the learning of the L2. This approach is known as the predictive CA. The other approach to CA is explanatory; it says
that when you notice errors in the performance of your L2 students, you carry out a CA of his L1 and L2in order to explain why the error occurred. This latter approach is called the weaker approach to CA while the former approach is called the strong approach to
CA. The weaker approach tends to be feasible because you will be dealing with the error at its point of occurrence while with the
strong approach, you will be predicting errors and predictions are not always correct. The weaker approach to CA was suggested as a
remedy against the stronger approach to CA which never made correct prediction of errors. A Nigerian language teacher can engage the
students in contrastive analysis of their languages with that of the second language bveing tights to biting out reasons for perceived difficulties in the second language. This approach, if
carefully and meaningfully carried out, could clarify difficult language issues your students may face.
CA is based on the concept of transfer of first language habits and culture into those of the second language (Weinreich 1953, Lado 1957). This means that in L2teaching, there is every possibility that your students will transfer some of their native language
items into the Nigerian second language you teach. This will tend to occur at all levels of the second language system, namely: the level of oral performance (phonetics and phonology), the level of morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, culture and so on.
3.3.3.3 Error Analysis
Error Analysis involves studying the errors of your student‟s L2 performance in order to remedy them in the course of your teaching.
In error analysis, you deal with actual rather than hypothesized errors. The approach to error analysis involves:
a)your collecting a body of errors;
b) reconstructing them to reflect the student‟s intended usage;
c)classifying them into the various linguistic domains violated;
d)indicate the degree of difficulty of each error by way of giving the frequency of occurrence of each error;
e)calculate the percentage of each error in the corpus of errors elicited, and
f)using the errors as a basis for remedial teaching.
Contrastive analysis and error analysis are tools for you to solve your students‟ second language learning difficulties. They are not meant for your students in their complex forms. The implication of this fact for you is that you must be prepared to apply or extend the linguistic skills you have acquired in the course of your
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training to the study and analysis of your student‟s L1 in order to deal with their L2 learning difficulties either by way of contrastive analysis or error analysis. Language testing will be examined as a full unit on its own.