Language learners and interlanguage
As research continued, the contrastive
analysis position offered more sophisticated
descriptions of the connections between the
L1 and the L2 and what it meant for language
learners developing their communication skills
(Corder 1983; Gass and Selinker 2001; Ringbom
1992; Seliger 1988). Studies indicated
that in addition to negative language transfer,
positive transfer between the L1 and L2 was
also important, suggesting that L2 learners
could benefit from being exposed to the structural
similarities of both languages. Research
also showed that aspects of the L2 itself could
explain many errors, such as when a learner
overgeneralizes L2 forms, a regular process that
happens with most developing English speakers
when they apply a regular conjugation to
an irregular verb (e.g., “He goed”).
These research results softened the absolute
contrastive analysis position and led to a
broader study of error analysis. At this point
even avoidance errors were described; these are
errors a learner makes when avoiding a difficult
L2 sound, word, or grammatical feature,
thereby masking a lack of proficiency (James
1998). A new term—interlanguage—was
coined to define the complex developing system
of the learners’ L2 that was influenced by
positive and negative transfer from the L1, in
conjunction with their developing knowledge
of the L2 itself (Brown 2000).