Abstract:
Contrastive analysis is the method of analysis of the structure of any two languages under
study with a view to estimate the different aspects of their systems, irrespective of their genetic
affinity of level of development. Contrastive analysis of the two languages becomes useful when it is
adequately describing the grammatical structure of two languages. It is assumed that learning a
second language is facilitated whenever there are similarities between that language and the first
language. The present study aims to explore the impediments encountered by the first year
students of the Faculty of Commerce and Management Studies University of Jaffna in learning
morphosyntactic features of English. Such approach may facilitate the learning process especially if
the structures are difficult with respect to the learner's first language (L1). The formal investigation
was carried out by distributing the self-administered questionnaires among the subjects. The
subjects' responses and answer scripts were analyzed, and the findings were derived. The findings
show that there are number of problems which are found to impede the learning of English due to
the greater dissimilar features found between English and Tamil. The results will be beneficial for
material development, ESL teaching and learning process in future.
