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There have been criticisms leveled against the contrastive analysis approach from various scholars and researchers:
1. The CA hypothesis was heavily criticized by proponents of the mentalist theories of the mind. They opposed the view that first language skills influenced second language acquisition and the idea of interference errors. They came up with an alternative hypothesis which they called identity hypothesis. The identity hypothesis claims that second language learners actively organize the target language speech they hear and make generalizations about its structure in the same way as children learning the first language. The course of the acquisition process is determined by the structural properties of the target language and of the learning system not by similarities and differences between the source and the target language. The errors the learners make are not due to differences between source and target language but to characteristics of the target language structures. Two studies carried out by Dulay and Burt (1974)support the identity hypothesis.
2. It assumes that all learner errors in the language are as a result of the differences between his first language and the target language .This is not true. In a study carried out by Dulay and Burt, in which they analyzed the spoken English of Spanish children, three types of errors were distinguished: interlingual, intralingual and unique errors. The results of the study indicated that first language influence could account for only 4.7% of the children’s errors while 87.1% of the errors were developmental Dulay and Burt (in Appel R.and Musysken1992 :85)
3. Contrastive analysis hypothesis emphasizes the notion of prediction but some research findings have shown that there have been cases where errors were predicted but no errors occurred. For instance after comparing the phonological system of Dholuo with that of English it may be found that the English /sh/ is realized as/ s/ in Dholuo and the conclusion will be that learners will use /s/ instead of /sh/ in such words as shell, shore, sheep etc. Although learners may make such errors it is also possible that learner language may lack erros in this area.
francis1897 answered the question on March 8, 2023 at 12:25
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