Translation as a means of teaching in a foreign language lesson

TRANSLATION AS A MEANS OF TEACHING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LESSON.
Abstract: The article discusses the need to use interlingual translation as one of the teaching tools in a foreign language lesson in a secondary school. The authors focus on the urgent need of participants in the educational process to include elements of explanation in their native language and translation exercises in the learning process. The development of translation exercises should take into account the parameters of the educational communicative situation created in the lesson.
Key words: foreign language lesson, translation, communicative-functional approach.
Interlingual translation performs various functions and is equated to a specific type of speech activity (I. A. Zimnyaya, Yu V. Ivanova, L. M. Ezhova, etc.). It is obvious that translation is a multifaceted and variable speech activity. That is why the inclusion of interlingual translation in foreign language teaching raises a large number of problematic methodological issues, and the first question concerns the very concept of “translation” - not as a purely linguistic, but as a psycholinguistic and didactic category. In other words, the question always arises of what kind of activity and what kind of result from this activity the teacher requires from students when he asks them to translate something from one language to another. The second question, the answers to which are highly debatable, is whether interlingual translation is needed at all when teaching a foreign language, and if so, whether its volume should be reduced to a minimum. This issue has become especially acute over the last five years, since the results of the long-term implementation of non-translation technologies in the teaching of foreign languages in secondary schools in Russia have not given the desired result.
We propose to resolve emerging issues in relation to interlingual translation from the standpoint of a communicative-functional approach, that is, to evaluate translation within the framework of the communicative situation in which the initiator of the translation, the translating subject and the recipient of the translation are immersed. The communicative-functional approach was formed in translation studies as an alternative to the textual approach and is designed to satisfy the needs of a specific communicative situation: the translation must be such as is necessary in specific communicative conditions.
In relation to a foreign language lesson, in which the initiator of translation, the translating subject and the recipient of the translation are the teacher and the student, the communicative-functional approach allows us to treat translation as a necessary element of working out a communicative situation artificially modeled in the educational environment, as well as as a means of teaching and control over the assimilation of foreign language material. Accordingly, the lesson should not set a macro-task to create a full-fledged text in the target language that is equivalent to the original in content, semantic, structural and functional terms. Educational translation is not aimed at transmitting all components of the original text. Translation in general is not always regarded as a translation of a text, but simply as a selection of correspondences in another language for units of one language (words, combinations of words, sentences). This choice is made by the student or teacher on the basis of already established cognitive experience, using a translation dictionary and/or context, or involves the operation of retrieving from memory the most suitable or unique correspondence in order to ensure the student’s accurate understanding of the lexical and grammatical meanings of the units of the material being studied, a complete understanding of the content of the statement and control of material assimilation.
The communicative-functional approach dictates the need to determine to what extent communicators - teacher and student - need interlingual translation in a foreign language lesson. We assumed that the trend towards translation-free teaching of foreign languages that has been spreading in Russia for decades is effective and that the need for interlingual translation in the classroom really does not exist. We accepted this assumption as a working hypothesis when conducting a survey among teachers and students in secondary schools. The survey was conducted to identify: a) the need of participants in the educational process for interlingual translation as a didactic tool in the process of learning a foreign language and b) the place of interlingual translation in the current practice of teaching/learning a foreign language in high school.
The questionnaire consisted of several questions (the content of the questions varied for different groups of respondents), answer options for these questions, and an open additional line for independent response. The survey was conducted in 14 educational institutions in Perm and the Perm region in the 2017–2018 academic year. Of these 14 institutions, 3 are schools with in-depth study of foreign languages, the remaining schools do not specialize in the study of foreign languages. The first group of respondents consisted of 43 English language teachers working in high schools, of which 6 people (14%) were teachers with work experience of up to 1 year, 16 people (37%) were teachers with work experience from 1 to 5 years, 17 people (40%) are teachers with work experience from 6 to 20 years, and 4 people (9%) are teachers whose experience exceeds 20 years; At the same time, 7 people (16% of the total number of respondents) are teachers of the highest qualification category.
The second group of respondents consisted of 672 students in grades 9–11 studying English, of which 551 people (82%) had excellent and/or good grades in the first half of the school year and 121 people (18%) had good and/or satisfactory grades in half-years of the academic year; Students who were not performing well in the subject did not take part in the survey.
Analysis of the responses of the first group of respondents (teachers) gave the following results. 98% of teacher respondents believe that interlingual translation is necessary at one stage or another, in one form or another, when teaching English. 100% of teacher respondents use interlingual translation in the teaching process.
At the same time, using translation and offering translation tasks to students, teachers most often solve the following methodological problems: organizing work in the classroom, explaining tasks, commenting on errors, introducing new lexical and grammatical material, monitoring the assimilation of material at various stages of learning, monitoring the understanding of foreign language texts .
Diagram 1. Reactions of teacher respondents to the question “Do you solve the following methodological problems through interlingual translation?” – the percentage of respondents who answered positively to each of the 7 positions of the question. 100% of teacher respondents are confident that translation is the most economical and effective way to solve a number of methodological problems. All teachers, incl. novice teachers based their confidence in the response to the question on their experience of working with children and the experience of their colleagues. In the open line, reactions of the following nature were given: “I would like to teach without translation, but this is impossible at school,” “We have to translate - children don’t understand a lot otherwise,”
Organization of work, explanation of tasks - 72%
Introduction of new lexical material - 93%
Introduction of new grammatical material - 100%
Control of lexical knowledge and skills - 100%
Control of grammatical knowledge and skills - 100%
Control of understanding of text content (reading) - 84%
Control of understanding of the content of the text (listening) - 28% understand vocabulary and grammar without translation,” etc. When asked whether, from their point of view, there are other, more effective ways than translation, of solving these didactic problems, 93% respondents answered negatively, 7% of teachers found it difficult to answer the question.
To the question “What conditions must be met in the educational process for translation-free technology of teaching a foreign language to be possible?” (there could be several answers to the question) 88% of the teacher respondents answered that it is necessary to reduce the volume of material being studied, since with such large volumes, children do not have time to use language guesses, do not find time to analyze English interpretations of vocabulary and grammatical rules, and are lazy / do not have time read texts thoughtfully; 40% – a fairly high general level of foreign language proficiency in the classroom is required; 28% – clearer assignments and reference materials in textbooks that do not allow for variability in interpretation are needed.
Analysis of responses from the second group of respondents (students) gave the following results. 100% of student respondents believe that interlingual translation is necessary at one stage or another, in one form or another when learning English. 100% of student respondents use interlingual translation from time to time in the learning process. Note that most students use applications and online translator programs that provide translation options for units of any size based on statistical processing of a text corpus, rather than bilingual translation dictionaries focused on lexical meaning and language norms. At the same time, students resort to translation to: understand the wording of tasks in textbooks and workbooks, understand the texts of tasks in exercises, understand texts for reading and translate individual words whose meanings must be understood to complete the exercises.
To the question “Does translation help you learn English?” 73% of student respondents answered positively, 7% - negatively, 20% believe that they could know the language just as well if they spent more time learning the language. In the open line, reactions of the following nature were given: “When you learn words for a dictation, at least you remember something,” “There are words and phrases that cannot be understood without translation,” “Translation is very necessary to understand grammar,” etc. .
Thus, the survey did not confirm the working hypothesis that there is no need for interlingual translation in the process of teaching/learning a foreign language and, on the contrary, revealed a stable opposite trend in the domestic school. There is a high need for interlingual translation among both groups of participants in the educational process – teachers and students. The need is dictated by the conviction of the effectiveness of using translation at various stages of work; the conviction is formed on the basis of experience working with language material. In the process of teaching/learning a foreign language, the practice of using interlingual translation is widespread.
We are approaching a very complex and pressing problem of providing the educational process with teaching materials containing tasks for interlingual translation. The modern line of educational and methodological complexes in the English language almost completely ignores the need and necessity for such tasks. As a result, teachers are busy preparing additional assignments, exercises and test materials. Almost all foreign language teachers in secondary schools spend extra time specifically on compiling didactic materials for translation, which they can use in the classroom.
Providing the educational process with exercises of a translational nature, firstly, would relieve teachers who are forced to independently compose these exercises. Most of the system of translation tasks can be regarded as a reserve component of teaching materials, to which the teacher resorts if it is necessary to solve a communicative problem through translation or as additional material for individual tasks in the lesson. Secondly, the developed materials should include criteria for assessing the completion of tasks “Translate into English” or “Translate into Russian”: at the moment, unsystematic requirements for translations by students are vague, students often do not understand the task and perform translations that do not meet the teacher’s expectations. Note that student translations may be adequate and equivalent, but if not performed at the expected level of equivalence, they do not achieve the task. Thirdly, a methodologically thought-out system for including translation in the teaching process would provide the teacher with a tool for correctly presenting new material using the Russian language.
Providing the educational process with methodological materials containing tasks for interlingual translation will certainly have a positive impact on teaching a foreign language. Non-translation methods today lead to the fact that many students often thoughtlessly “run” the texts of assignments through machine translation and, by analogy, in order to generate their own statements, they first compose them in Russian, “run” them through machine translation and rewrite or memorize them with a lot of errors. Even if students have a high level of development of foreign language communicative competence and can independently understand and generate literate speech in a foreign language, working with the semantics of language material remains an extremely important stage of speech activity. Otherwise, while demonstrating developed communication skills, students often have only an approximate idea of the meanings of a number of lexical units, do not distinguish between synonymous series and distort the content of texts in a foreign language. From our point of view, interlingual translation must necessarily be accompanied by the development of abstract nominations, polysemantic vocabulary, phraseological units, cultures, complex grammatical phenomena and constructions, logical connections in superphrasal unities and texts.
At the moment, a more thorough study of the problem is being carried out, and publications are increasingly appearing that prove the advisability of including bilingual translation exercises in the educational process. The research is designed to solve the problem of providing teachers with standard tasks for interlingual translation at each stage of the educational process - familiarization with new material, practicing this material, application in speech and control.