200-300 WORD STUDENTS´ESSAYS

LUIS FELIPE ARIAS´S ESSAY

Translation has been an important part of English language teaching for a long time, but it has been abandoned since communicative methodologies became dominant. 

What is translation?, it is one of those questions which seems easy to be answered, most of people would say translation is not more than changing a word o groups of words from certain (English) language into an equivalent in the target language, some others might say translation is to find a way to adapt a text that is written in a foreign language to a target language in order to communicate authors’ thoughts, theories and ideas to a new audience; to convey meaning, to spread information which otherwise would be narrowed down to people who speak the English language.

Translation has undoubtedly helped people to obtain understanding and knowledge regarding a nonnative language, especially to those who are at the initial stages of a learning process. That is why, this strategy was used initially and it kept on being used until a few years ago to help English language learners. However, it has been left out for most of learning language institutions lately due to the new language acquisition methodologies. These methodologies are focused on developing communicative skills rather than language accuracy and proficiency.

So the information previously mention, we can understand communicative skills as those who have to do with listening and speaking, so the learners are taught by drilling techniques. That way, English language students learn how to respond to specific and common everyday life situations or behavior patterns, but when it comes to face new or complex situations, they might not feel comfortable at all since they do not have tools enough to understand the complexity and beauty of the English language.

The English language teaching should be balanced at the early stages, it should include communicative skill approaches where the learners get the chance to participate both actively (speaking and writing) and passively (listening and reading), grammar understanding tasks and translation exercises which let us know how well students have mastered previous concepts and vocabulary. As the course advances, translation should be reduced since the students are supposed have a great deal of tools and strategies to communicate and understand language without any translation process on their minds. Although, it is important to keep in mind that translation, even at advanced stages, could be a field of interest for some students who find this as an opportunity for making a living and for learning about the English culture. In that is the case, translation tasks should not be avoided because some students might find it interesting and enjoyable. Finally it is our duty as English teacher to know how to include translation effectively and appropriately to guarantee the students’ improvements.

ESTHER TRELLEZ´S ESSAY

Leonardi (2010), translation enhances critical reading skills, improves grammatical awareness and language proficiency, facilitates vocabulary acquisition, and develops intercultural competence.

The process of translation, required the analysis of each word and/or structure of the sentences to translate, for this analysis the translator must read carefully and put in context every factor of what understand of the target language, for all this process, we can say that translation enhances critical reading skills; also the constant need to read several contents to translate, allows to read and reading help to train the brain to analyze more.

According to Popovic R. “The purpose of translation in the language classroom is not to train professionals, but to help learners develop their knowledge of English”, considering this, we can say that is a fact, because in the process of translation, a person can learn a lot about that idiom, for example, because the reading to translate, the person could obtain new vocabulary, learn and/ or practice the correct structures of sentences, considering oblique translation techniques, a person can learn this last more, because those kind of techniques are when the grammatical structure of the target language do not match with the source one, so are necessary some fix to a better translation, so, when the person use this can learn the correct structures of sentences of both languages. Because the reading to translate, a person could learn and/ or practice punctuation and the correct forms of relate a writing, is also possible to practice the pronunciation of the words and have a better develop of the speaking skill, because if a person read, it is like if is talking with someone, and that’s practicing the speaking.

In translating one language to other, we emphasis in the culture of each one to understand better the meaning of the words or the meaning of the text, also we learn the origin of some words, so with this, the translator develops intercultural competence, because is learning about others cultures. 

OSCAR HERNAN DELGADILLO´S ESSAY

Atkinson (1987) suggests that activities that involve some translation promote guessing strategies amongst students and helps reduce the word-for- word translation that often occurs and which results in inappropriate L2 use. 

Does translation in the classroom accelerate the learning process? In spite of the lack of positive literature available on translation use in the classroom, after studying important authors about the use of translation techniques in the classroom I can say that with careful application aimed at specific goals and situations, translation can contribute to the students' acquisition of the target language, at all levels.

Atkinson (1987) suggests that activities that involve some translation promote guessing strategies amongst students and helps reduce the word-for- word translation that often occurs and which results in inappropriate L2 use. Moreover, informal translation in the class can become a form of peer support for the learners.

Unfortunately, it was and is widely believed that one can only learn a new language by abandoning L1. This kind of thinking isn’t unique to educators; For example, some parents ban speaking the family’s native tongue in the home to acquire a new language faster. However, learning a second language ultimately enables a person to strengthen her communication skills in both languages.

Students can compare and contrast their native language to the one they are learning, which helps them connect their knowledge to new words. Also, students have the chance to systemize the acquired language making their second language seem more understandable.

As a conclusion, I feel that as future teachers we must consider translation as good strategy, we can use in our English classes to improve some important skills in our students.

HARNEL PEÑA´S ESSAY

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

According to studies, translation has played an important role in teaching a second language, and more particularly in the English language.

But according to communicative methods, and in a more investigative way, studies have argued that translation is not a useful tool to acquire a second language; its reason is that it can cause interference between learning and is not a totally communicative approach that will allow the student to improve those skills necessary to function in a linguistically correct way.

Among them we can find Kavaliauskiene G. (2009) who says that "translation does not help students to develop communication skills." From his perspective it can be controversial to affirm it, since we could say that this activity can be used by those students who have a more analytical learning approach.

Within this structure, it could be noted that the mother tongue plays an important role, since from some points of view it would seem that translating a text would be easy, the question is that within this process complex analyzes are carried out, which allow the translation be logical and correct, since, to be able to be executed in an integral way, you must have a significant level of compression of the two languages.

Within the learning of a second language and this refers to the student, we must take into account the metacognitive processes that translating can improve, achieve the necessary fluency, precision and flexibility are skills that within this activity would improve consistently.

Kavaliauskiene G. will have enough reasons to perhaps give his perspective on this process, but it is to analyze that an accompaniment of the communicative processes and this, would have a positive impact on the student's education.