Contrastive analysis hypothesis theory consists of four aspects。 First, language belongs to behavior。 Similar to the behavioristic theory of language learning, it believes that second language learning is a process of acquiring the target language and producing their thoughts through the language freely。 Secondly, the main cause of errors in second language learning is the native language, especially the differences between the native language and target language。 Thirdly, differences between the native language and target language cause the negative transfer, while similarities bring the positive transfer。 Finally, the difficulty of second language learning depends on the amount of differences between the native language and the target language。 That is, the more differences the two languages have, the more difficulties learners have。

2。3。2 Error Analysis Theory

Contrastive analysis hypothesis theory has defects。 For example, it isn’t scientific to equal the differences to the difficulties。 And it isn’t necessarily true that similarities only bring positive transfer, while differences only cause negative transfer。 Because of theses limits, researchers started to focus on the errors appearing in the second language learning。 Later, Error analysis theory appeared and gradually took the place of contrastive analysis hypothesis theory。文献综述

Error analysis theory put forward the two limits above, and claimed that it’s partial to consider errors as the differences between the language used by the learners and the standard language used by the natives。 Error analysis theory stresses the errors appearing in the process of second language learning, but not the differences between the native language and target language。 In this way, error analysis theory focuses more on the process of language transfer。

Error analysis theory greatly influenced the second language teaching。 According to the errors, teachers could adjust their teaching strategies, thus helping to improve the learners’ second language learning。

2。3。3 Inter-Language Theory

An inter-language is a kind of language coming into being in the process of second language learning。 When learning a second language, people may incorrectly summarize some rules of the target language。 When the incorrect rules are firmly believed by the learners, an inter-language appears。 As the learners learn more about the target language, some rules will be corrected, and the inter-language will be closer and closer to the target language。 But in this process, fossilization of a language will occur to hinder the improvement。