Essay Victoria Gualteros

MARÍA VICTORIA GUALTEROS

INDIVIDUAL ESSAY

d. Kavaliauskienė G. (2009) says that translation does not help students to develop communication skills. Translation activities may be suitable for students who prefer analytical or verbal-linguistic learning strategies

Translation in class.

            English teachers try to use translation as a tool for students to understand what he means, sometimes the English resources are not enough if we talk about the language, and if at the same time we find more translation than English. In Colombia the translation is not seen as something positive for students and this statement is true because that is the method that most teachers used to have in their classes, and that is the reason why many people did not learn English with the traditional form. But anyway translating is necessary for native Spanish speakers, due to we tend to attach every single word to Spanish and that is something that comes like a chip that does not let us think in English.

            Firstly it is important to have the concept of translation clear, "Translation is the general term referring to the transfer of thoughts and ideas from one language (source) to another (target)" (p.l). Now to make emphasis on the communication skills (speaking and writing), it is essential that students understand that we do not speak English in the way we do it in Spanish, that the grammar, the vocabulary and the order word change a lot, bearing this in mind here is where English really begins. Writing is specially one of the most difficult skills to develop because it requires grammar and to get separated from our maternal language. Moreover there are some verbal linguistic strategies that can be applied in order to find a wide usage of translation into this skills. Verbal linguistic students are especially interested in the words they hear, for this reason they find more interesting learning through Translation because they can hear and recognize the sounds of the words, but what they really care about is the written and the translation. In this concept translation does not become into an enemy for English teachers owing to students must know what it means.

            This method has taken a boring, difficult and irrelevant position thus the traditional system tells us that to learn a new word it was necessary to search in a dictionary and get the translation, but actually most people do not use a dictionary because they have learnt that writing is not translating word by word. But how does it work into a class? Native speaker have the need of knowing every single new word, and sometimes by giving a short explanation of it in English can help, but some other they want to know what it is exactly in their maternal language. And a person who leans toward a verbal/linguistic learning style will tend to pick up new words easily and have a large vocabulary. However, the idea of abandoning the native tongue is too stressful to many learners, who need a sense of security in the experience of learning a foreign language.

            And although all of this can be seen as something useful when learning a new language it is important to take into account that Translation develops three qualities essential to all language learning: accuracy, clarity, and flexibility (Ross, 2000:61). And at any point this method also works for learning more and improving language skills.

            To conclude Translation can help students to develop a wider and deeper vocabulary skills, they will be able to understand texts and they are able to improve their writing, and finally the students’ autonomously generated reading comprehension exercises, summary writing and back-translation activities help raise learners’ awareness of differences between English and the mother tongue and facilitate linguistic development.

Mind map.