PEDAGOGICAL UTILITY OF TRANSLATION IN TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION TO IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS

Indubitably, the skepticism against the pedagogical utility of translation in language teaching classroom has drastically changed in recent years. It is no wonder that writers such as Duff (1994) and Beeby (1996) ardently call for the reintroduction of translation in the process of second language (L2) acquisition. Due to a failure to understand the potential principles underlying the translation theories, L2 teachers and practitioners have largely neglected the use of translation as a technique in teaching foreign languages. Accordingly, the present study aims at investigating the pedagogical utility of translation in L2 teaching process. For this purpose, a sample of 180 students studying English as a foreign language was selected randomly. Using an Oxford Placement Test (OPT), they were homogenized and divided, based upon their proficiency levels, into six groups, i.e., elementary, intermediate, and advanced, for both experimental and control groups. During the treatment, the three experimental groups received translation oriented techniques aiming at teaching. Some textual features and the cross linguistic differences between the learners’ first language (L1) and the foreign language they are learning were measured. At the end of the treatment, a post test measuring the same textual features was administered to both control and experimental groups. Finally, a researcher- developed questionnaire was also given as a post hoc analysis to gauge the learners’ attitudes towards the effectiveness of translation as a L2 pedagogical tool. The results illustrated that the idea of the effectiveness of using translation activities in L2 classrooms to improve student’s learning process was supported. The findings of the present study does contribute to the field by supplying the curriculum developers with some useful insights on how to design the grammar section of the English books in a way in which the learners have to translate sentences from L1 to L2 with the newly learned structures in question. Some useful translation activities, utilized in the grammar section of the book as a complementary activity, may improve the efficiency of the learning process.