Goofing: An Indicator of Children's Second Language Learning Strategies1

From the viewpoint of syntactic error analysis, we look for children's second language (L2) learning strategies as manifested in their L2 speech. We discuss two conflicting hypotheses: 1) the contrastive analysis hypothesis which predicts that L2 goofs (errors) will result from first language (L1) interference, and 2) the L2 = L1 hypothesis which predicts that L2 goofs will be similar to L1 goofs and are not the result of negative transfer. We propose several theoretical assumptions that support the L2 = L1 hypothesis and that describe the process of L2 acquisition. Based on these assumptions, alternative explanations are offered for those goofs that seem to support the CA hypothesis. Thus, we propose language learning strategies that seem to account for all the available data on children's goofs.