In the field of foreign language & ESL instruction there are varied opinions about the usage of direct translation resources & their actual impact on student learning. The most commonly sought translation resource is the bilingual dictionary, which technology has enhanced in the form of electronic translators. These devices are increasingly replacing printed bilingual dictionaries to a large extent due to their convenient sizes, instant translation searches, & often even multilingual databases. In the language learning classroom however, there is much debate about how high dependence on these facilitating instruments actually hinders language processing & comprehension skills. This is the dilemma presented in an online article I read which was published by an ESL instructor.
When a language learner encounters unknown vocabulary in written or oral discourse in the language being acquired, he/she has the option of merely resorting to direct translation to obtain the word's immediate meaning or otherwise of resourcefully applying decoding strategies to decipher the contained meaning. Language learners can attempt to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word by examining the context in which it appears & relating it to words he/she does know. In addition, word construction, which includes affixes and root forms, is also conducive to revealing word meaning. When a student learns a new word, he/she must not dismiss the importance of concurrently learning how the word is used in real discourse. Only through associating new words with their particular function & significance in communication the student will authentically internalize a word's fundamental meaning.
Unfortunately as stated in the article, having electronic translators at their disposition frequently causes students to heavily rely on instant translation for understanding unfamiliar words, therefore leading them away from developing essential decoding skills . Furthermore, during classroom interaction & when practice activities are being done, students' dependency on referring to translation can turn quite disruptive both for the students' focus on the lesson theme & for the instructor's goal to proceed with the lesson. A viable approach to the issue would involve the instructor teaching essential vocabulary decoding strategies & afterwards reasonably limiting the use of the electronic translators.
On my behalf I believe that translation devices, when operated in the ideal circumstances & setting, can be fairly beneficial to learning certain aspects of a word's meaning. I feel that mainly when a student is just beginning to learn a language, occasionally translation can assist in acquiring the meaning of abstract concepts. However, once the learner starts to establish an operable language register, reference to translation should become less & less frequent. The students by then should be capable of managing his/her gained language competence to infer word meaning through context & usage.
Jonathan, I like the point you raise with the use of electronic translators. Personally, I am extremely against the use of online translators completely though I am an advocate of the use of online bilingual dictionaries. A common misconception is that these tools are one in the same but in fact they are not. With online dictionaries one can look up the equivalent of words and some phrases to understand their meanings. My favorite online dictionary is wordreference.com, which provides word and phrase equivalents as well as the context in which the translated words are used. Google translate, though popular, fails to do so. Many use Google translate in order to decipher sentences and paragraphs quickly but the translation is often incorrect. In fact I know of an Italian student who once wrote a paper in English and then Google translated the entire thing and submitted it. The professor of the course quickly caught on due to fact that the paper failed to make sense within the context that it was assigned. Additionally, you bring up a good point that overuse of these types of tools lead students away from developing decoding and encoding skills. As language instructors it is vital that we instill these skills and teach students how to work from context clues. In the real world when the student is speaking a language, they will not have their translator or dictionary readily available at all times and therefore it is essential that we teach them how to understand and communicate in the target languages on their own.
ReplyDelete