Against Translation
I have just read Vocabulary by John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri, a part of the Resource Books for Teachers Series by Oxford House Press. This post has nothing to do with the merits of the book although I would say that I didn’t find it very useful.
My problem is with one of their assumptions that relates back to one of my earlier posts. Right in the introduction there is a mention of why translating is a natural learning strategy and should be allowed or at least built upon in the language classroom. As it so happens, the example they give has to do with the Turkish word ev.
Rather than making a case for them, it actually makes an excellent case for not using the students’ L1. John and Mario claim that a student will naturally associate any new word in English with its translation in the L1. They are right, this is inevitable, at least at low levels. However, it is not something that should be encouraged.
Just looking at the word ev in Turkish. The closest English equivalent would be “home”. However, “home” is often an adverb in English, so we can’t say things like “We’re going to my home” or “We went to home.” In Turkish, it always functions as a noun and so there are immediate grounds for error. This word can also be translated as “house” or “apartment.” In Turkish, the word can be used for your house or your apartment, whereas, at least in American English, we would distinguish between going to our house or going to our apartment. This is a common source of confusion in the classroom as you ask students if they live in a house and they say they do (houses are very expensive and hard to find in Istanbul).
This is why I really discourage this kind of approach. Even with the simplest words, there are vast differences in grammar and usage. Encouraging translation encourages these kinds of mistakes. We want to build students’ learning strategies that don’t rely on this crutch. It slows down their processing of the language, leads to untold numbers of errors, and kills their fluency.
I’ve had so many students that struggle to say even the simplest sentences because they are still translating. It becomes a conceptual problem as well. Students get so frustrated when there aren’t grammatical or lexical equivalents to new language.
My best students and the people I know that learn languages well always think in the target language as much as possible. They don’t get tripped up by “I feel like a coke.” because they don’t translate “feel” and “like” literally. Rather, they take it in context and immediately understand what it means. If we translated the Turkish kola icmek icimden geldi it would literally translate as “cola drinking came from my inside” which makes no sense in English.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had students be unable to process new words unless translated because it’s become such a habit or because they haven’t developed better learning strategies yet. I’ve had a picture of an owl and pointed to it and said, “owl” and still had a student ask “what it meant.” I’ve had students come up with the weirdest translations for present and future perfect tenses (there are no equivalents in Turkish). They mangle their own language just to try and make it work. I’ve had students using causatives correctly yet still want to know “what they mean” because they can’t translate them.
One activity in Vocabulary was to play Othello with words in L1 on one side of a card and words in L2 on the other. This kind of decontexualized activity only makes the situation worse. What’s the point of having students make sentences in decontexualized fashion and at the same time reinforcing bad translation habits?
Condition the students to think in English as soon as possible and the rewards they will reap in the future will be enormous.
Related Posts:
Turkish-English Dictionaries in the Classroom
Using Turkish in the Classroom
Tags: L1, L2, Translation
ELT Basics | turklis1 | 
January 26, 2010 4:43 pm
5 Comments
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By Alex Case, February 3, 2010 @ 2:20 pm
This is another post that has given me an idea for one of my own, this time “Wishful thinking in ELT theory”
By Anne Hodgson, February 4, 2010 @ 8:11 pm
Hi Nick,
It’s very nice to meet you on your blog. I teach adults (business people and college students) in Germany, and write online language exercises for a magazine.
As regards the issue you are dealing with here, I most definitely agree with you that L1 should be used very sparingly in class, if at all, with lower and intermediate level learners. I’d say total immersion clearly works best, especially combined with real motivation. But for advanced learners with a lot of experience, from a certain level on, I think “noticing” special structures in a language is beneficial and opens up completely new dimensions. When I compare chunks of English with chunks of German, I still sometimes discover new things about the two languages. So I actually quite like your literal translation of Coke-drinking “coming from my inside”. That makes sense to me and (if I were studying Turkish, which I really should) would help me with the syntax. (I’m bilingual and a translator in my second job, so that mindset plays into my approach to language learning.)
On a lesser note, there’s also my students’ practical need to develop translation skills, as they have to translate at work and college, too. But that’s a separate issue.
I loved your owl picture story. I figure if a student can get a teacher’s individual attention by asking for a translation, why should he/she do any thinking at all? Attention of that sort can really motivate certain types, can’t it?
See you on BELTfree!
Kind regards, Anne
By turklis1, February 5, 2010 @ 10:32 am
Hi Anne,
I would agree with you on the use of L1 with advanced learners. Language comparison can be very fruitful. As you said, my point is more about developing and encouraging the habit of thinking in English from the start as much as possible. I’ve seen the tremendous benefits and I’ve seen the problems students have if they don’t adopt this attitude.
Translation is another ball game and a separate skill in my opinion. I can speak Turkish and English, but ask me to translate between the two and I’m often stumped. I’ve never developed that skill.
Thanks for pointing out some good uses of L1 and translation. I’ll also see you on BELTfree. I really need to get over there more.
By Vickie Tisdale, May 3, 2010 @ 8:23 am
The people learn languages well always think in the target language as much as possible.Students are unable to process new words unless translated because it’s become such a habit or because they haven’t developed better learning strategies yet.So ELT basic helps the people in this regard.