Contrastive Analysis and English Language Teaching

Abstract

This research paper deals with the Contrastive Analysis and English Language Teaching with reference to the Yemeni learner. From the forties to the sixties the dominant theoretical position on language learning reflected the dominance of behaviourism in psychology, and structuralism in linguistics. Briefly put it held that language learning whether first or second language is a form of habit formation. As a matter of fact, the usefulness and practical value of CA cannot be refuted in the field of language description as well as in teaching and learning the target language. Moreover, it helped in establishing the basic ideas of new approaches and studies of CA which are coming up in the field of linguistics these days. However, the new approaches which have grown out of CA have not destroyed the original idea of CA, that the learner’s L1 largely determines what problems the learner is going to face. The descriptive-analytical approach is followed in this research.