There is an interview with at the moment (posted by in which he talks about his own career and the value of research. It’s well worth a look but this one quote stood out for me:
“My hope has always been that teachers could enquire into their own practices.”
This interview popped into my mind as I was reading this paper by Carol Ebbert-Hübner and regular ELT Research Bites contributor, Clare Maas. While I think the topic – translation and its benefits – is interesting and will be of value to all teachers (in particular those who teach students in a context where the students and teacher share the same L1), what really struck me when reading this was the value of teachers looking at their practice and figuring out a way to test whether it is working or not. If you’re looking to put together a project in your own school (and possibly even get published), this paper is a fabulous blueprint.
This study comes out of Trier University where translation is one means by which the students are taught English. The teachers there believe in the value of translation as a means of learning languages. In particular, the type of instruction is referred to as CAT – Contrastive Analysis and Translation. This involves students (at an advanced C1 level) comparing English grammar to German grammar, especially in areas where grammatical rules differ (e.g. articles, prepositions, modals) and carrying out various translation tasks (at sentence level and longer pieces).This paper investigates the effect of translation classes on students’ grammatical accuracy.
The study included 235 participants who were studying for a BA in English Studies in Trier University, Germany. The students were divided into classes that received exercises in CAT and those that received more traditional grammar classes. One essay writing group served as a control (i.e. translation was not used in class as a teaching method). Pre and post grammar tests were given to the students. These tests were things we’d all be familiar with – gap fills, multiple choice, choose an appropriate word. The results showed that the translation classes improved significantly between the pre and post test, doing better than the more traditional grammar class. The translation class group did particularly well in tests of prepositions and verb tense. The control group (i.e. the essay writing class) didn’t show any improvement which suggests that working with the language alone won’t result in improvements in these types of grammar tests (important perhaps if you’re teaching students who are working on Cambridge exams). An interesting caveat is that the translation group did worse on tests of articles.
Takeaway
The authors acknowledge that after falling out of favour, translation is growing in popularity. However, research on efficacy is limited and this fairly large scale study is a positive contribution to the field. If you are teaching in a context where it is possible to use translation in class and contrastive analysis, then the results suggest it is worth adding this tool to your teaching repertoire. On a more meta level, I found this article a wonderful example of the genre and an inspiration for teachers who would like to carry out research in their contexts – especially if you’re a bit intimidated by statistics.
Reference
Ebbert-Hübner, C. & Maas, C. (2017). Can Translation Improve EFL Students’ Grammatical Accuracy?. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies. 5(4). 191-202. Available at: http://www.eltsjournal.org/archive/value5%20issue4/23-5-4-17.pdf
