Hirose (2003)
Our last reading and class discussion made me aware of the history and controversy related to contrastive analysis. With that in mind, at the end of this article I had two big questions.
Hirose states (as many do at the end of articles such as this) that "the relation between L1 and L2 organizational patterns needs further investigation." My question is, why? In the early days of CR, the motivation was related to pedagogy and finding some "best practice" for teaching Standard English "logical" organizational patterns. Is this still the motivation? I feel our teaching, and understandings of the multifaceted influences, particularly the social cultural dimension, have surpassed the research findings. Perhaps in EFL/monolingual contexts this type of CR could be relevant to pedagogy. However, I was left wondering if this argument/need to find an answer is theory internal. Is the motivation for this to prove/disprove a theory?
Another question I was left with was that of "voice". As language learners, travellers of cultures, to what extent do we adopt a different voice when reading and writing in another language? To what extent is this related to proficiency? personality? confidence? identity?
Hirose states (as many do at the end of articles such as this) that "the relation between L1 and L2 organizational patterns needs further investigation." My question is, why? In the early days of CR, the motivation was related to pedagogy and finding some "best practice" for teaching Standard English "logical" organizational patterns. Is this still the motivation? I feel our teaching, and understandings of the multifaceted influences, particularly the social cultural dimension, have surpassed the research findings. Perhaps in EFL/monolingual contexts this type of CR could be relevant to pedagogy. However, I was left wondering if this argument/need to find an answer is theory internal. Is the motivation for this to prove/disprove a theory?
Another question I was left with was that of "voice". As language learners, travellers of cultures, to what extent do we adopt a different voice when reading and writing in another language? To what extent is this related to proficiency? personality? confidence? identity?
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