Abstract:

Translation is one of the oldest foreign language methods, but for decades, until recently, it has been out of favour within the ‘progressive’ community of foreign language teachers. It is still considered by many to be an outdated practice, reminiscent of the grammar-translation method, which enjoys the rather negative reputation of stifling creativity and not contributing much to learners’ development. However, as someone who was taught primarily through translation, the author of this paper sees a lot of advantages of not banishing L1 (i.e. the students' mother tongue) and translation from the classroom. It is often argued that students’ L1 and translation can be relied upon in foreign language teaching practice both as a controlled practice exercise for lexis and grammar, and a separate skill (what Baker 2006 and others call the ‘fifth-skill’) for Translation and Interpreting students at tertiary level. That being said, one of the major limitations of resorting to Translation and the so-called ‘own-language’ in the classroom is the very common situation when the language teacher does not speak the students’ L1. In this paper, I will take this debate further and put to the test the claim that translation can indeed be used effectively in an English as a Foreign Language lesson in a monolingual group of learners where the teacher does not speak the learners’ L1. Using a case study of a group of Turkish students learning English and a non-Turkish speaking teacher, I will lay out the results of an experimental lesson with a vocabulary focus.

References:
[1] Baker, Ph. (2006) Jumping the language barrier: the `fifth skill ́, English Teaching Matters, Vol. 7 Number 1.
[2] Kerr, Ph. (2014) Translation and Own-language Activities. CUP.

Keywords:

EFL, ESL, TESOL, translation, own language activities, teaching methodology.