Contrastive analysis: An overview

Contrastive Analysis (= CA) In the 1940s to 1960s before the SLA field as we know it was established, Charles Fries (1945:9) wrote: "The most efficient materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner." Robert Lado, Linguistics Across Cultures, 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 and culture — both productively and when attempting to speak the language and to act in the culture and receptively when attempting to grasp and understand the language and culture as practiced by natives." (1957, in Gass and Selinker 1983, p. 1)