Contrastive analysis is an approach to analysis of second language acquisition, based on a belief that a more effective teaching pedagogy would come out when the similarities and differences between native language and target language are taken into consideration. Contrastive analysis compares the forms and meanings across the two languages to spot the mismatches or differences.

Contrastive Analysis aims to compare languages (e.g., LI and L2) in order to determine potential errors for the ultimate purpose of isolating what needs to be learned and what does not need to be learned in a second language learning situation. The goal of contrastive analysis is to predict what areas will be easy to learn and what areas will be hard to learn. By such an analysis, it is supposed that some leaning difficulties could be predicted in terms of language transfer. Contrastive Analysis was associated in its early days with behaviorism and structuralism.