TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES: LANGUAGE INTERFERENCE AND CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS

This article explores two critical concepts in foreign language teaching: language interference and the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH). Language interference occurs when a learner's native language (L1) influences their acquisition of a second language (L2), often leading to errors across phonological, grammatical, lexical, and morphological levels. The CAH, developed in the mid-20th century, provides a framework for predicting these errors by contrasting L1 and L2. While the strong version of the hypothesis claims that all errors can be predicted through contrastive analysis, the weak version allows for a more nuanced understanding that accounts for other factors in language learning. This article discusses the implications of these concepts for language teaching, highlighting how contrastive analysis can be used to improve pedagogy through error correction, curriculum design, and learner awareness. The limitations of the CAH are also addressed, emphasizing the need to integrate it with other approaches to provide a comprehensive understanding of second language acquisition..