PAOLA SARMIENTO'S WORK

ESSAY:

TRANSLATION AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL TO IMPROVE ENGLISH SKILLS

Vanessa Leonardi states in her book “The Role of Pedagogical Translation in Second Language Acquisition” that “Translation can help improve foreign language teaching and learning”. This concept refers to the role of translation as an enriching strategy to enhance the development of English skills such as, Reading and Writing in the learning process of a Second language. Even though, translation it’s not used nowadays as the only method to teach English, it’s slowly coming back as a reliable complement in the set of teaching techniques.

The art of translating from L1 to L2 was one on the main teaching strategies (if not the only one in some cases) to learn a Foreign a Language for decades. Since the 18th century it was used as the most effective method for the acquisition of a second language. Through the “Traditional Method”, presented by the American professor Sears in 1845, the translation of literature became the main teaching strategy. However, in the 20th century, educators started to discard it’s used and to turn to the direct methods and the communicative approaches. This is how translation disappeared from the academic scene for a long time, until now. Translation as a language learning activity was considered as being unsuitable within the context of foreign language learning. (Brown, 2002).

In recent years, a new perspective of Translation has arisen among the academic community, presenting the idea of using translation techniques to develop critical thinking, grammatical awareness and language proficiency, as well as helping with the vocabulary acquisition and intercultural competence. “Significant signs of a new revival of translation in language teaching have become visible, as shown by recent literature on applied linguistics”.(Malmkjaer, 1998,p.1). Foreign language teachers have been reviving the use of translation as a pedagogical tool as they observed translation activities to be useful to strengthen all skills, but specially, reading and writing. Translation plays a very important role in an increasingly globalized world and in increasingly multilingual Europe where it is used on daily basis (Leonardi, 2010, p.17).

Leonardi finally presents the concept of “Pedagogical Translation” which explains the pedagogical benefits of translation activities in the classroom: Critical reading of texts, the study of grammar into context, cultural mediation, development of cultural competence, reading comprehension and written production. All of these advantages constitute Translation as a very appealing choice when it comes to select an effective set of strategies to build successfully the Basic English skills in the learner’s L2 acquisition process. 

REFERENCES

·         LEONARDI, V. (2010). The Role of Pedagogical Translation in Second Language Acquisition. From theory to practice.

·         Brown, H. D., 2002. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. 4th
ed. New York: Longman.

·         Malmkjaer, K., 1998. Translation and Language Teaching. Manchester: St
Jerome.


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