THE RELEVANCE OF TRANSLATION AS A PEDAGOGICAL AID IN IMPROVING ALGERIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL THIRD YEAR STUDENTS’ WRITING SKILL: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

In the 20th century, several researchers argued that translation could not be considered a useful pedagogical tool in second and foreign language teaching. Over the last few decades, however, there has been ongoing research reassessing translation practice in language classroom. The aim of the current thesis is twofold: firstly, it attempts to explore secondary school teachers’ attitudes towards the use of translation as a teaching aid in English language classrooms to improve not only students’ writing skill but to foster English as a foreign language learning in general. Secondly, it sheds light on the importance of translation in identifying students’ common writing errors and how it can be successfully employed to improve their foreign language writing performance. The data were collected through a questionnaire addressed to secondary school teachers working in different cities in Algeria to gauge their attitudes towards the usefulness of translation in EFL classroom. To endow this research with a practical dimension, an empirical study has also been conducted with the active participation of third year foreign languages students in Belaouinet Mohamed secondary school in Sig, Mascara, who were provided with Arabic texts of different genres and types to be translated into English. The findings report the positive attitudes of teachers towards the usefulness of translation in EFL classroom. Translation activities that have been practised with the students showed a clear evidence of the effectiveness of translation in raising students’ awareness of their common writing errors and in helping teachers determine the areas of writing deficiencies. A number of translation activities that secondary school teachers can judiciously and purposefully try out in their classrooms to overcome the difficulties in writing classes have been suggested. The present work is an attempt to address in a methodological fashion the topic of pedagogical translation in language teaching which continues to be the focal point of a heated debate among researchers.