What is Contrastive Analysis

This chapter presents an autobiographical account of socio-cultural surroundings and motives that shaped the author's journey to becoming a multilingual language learner. The contexts that occasioned the need to learn new languages are described along with affective considerations that underlay his sustained interest in multilingualism. Although the naturalistic and autonomous language learning settings are characterized by idiosyncrasies which do not lend themselves to generalizations, the account of multilanguage learning experiences in the chapter can offer insights as to how the most unlikely contexts and opportunities to multilingualism may come about. In the chapter, the vivid descriptions of how his enthusiasm to become multilingual helped him refine and hone his language learning skills are presented in anecdotal tone. The strategies and individual techniques he devised to cope with the complexities of languages in the process of language learning are presented in detail in the study.