Tonal languages differ in how they use phonetic correlates, e.g. average pitch height and pitch direction, for tonal contrasts. Thus, native speakers of a tonal language may need to adjust their attention to familiar or unfamiliar phonetic cues when perceiving non-native tones. On the other hand, speakers of a non-tonal language may need to…

The "state of the art" in the three fields of contrastive analysis, error analysis and interlanguage is critically examined from the point of view of evolving an explanatory theory of a second language learner's performance. Each field is discussed with respect to its outreach, theoretical assumptions, methodology, claims and empirical…

The potential value and limitations of contrastive linguistic analysis (CLA) in pedagogical application are examined in this article. Attempts to quantify learning tasks in the modes of difference and difficulty are illustrated by the use of four diagrams: (1) a method of computing actual learning tasks, (2) two contrastive continuums, (3) a…

The problem of interference caused by linguistic transfer in second language learning does not increase with the number of languages that the student has acquired. The ability to learn a second, third, or fourth language depends on what Chomsky calls "the language acquisition device," which is a capacity or a sensitivity formed by a combination of…