Translation as a foreign language learning process

Abstract

No contexto desta pesquisa, a tradução é vista como um processo mental que pode estabelecer importantes traços lingüísticos na memória, os quais podem ser utilizados na produção lingüística, no caso desta pesquisa, em resumos escritos. Vinte e sete alunos brasileiros graduandos do curso de inglês, considerados avançados, participaram do estudo. Os resultados forneceram subsídios a uma reavaliação da função da tradução na aquisição da lingua estrangeira. Parece que a tradução tende a levar os alunos a articular mais o sistema lingüístico, o que faz com que eles notem alguns elementos do texto original e os incluam nos resumos. Abstract : The use of translation in second language teaching has been a debatable matter for a long time. In the context of this research, translation is seen as a mental process which may lead to awareness of linguistic features of the input text. By taking into consideration that translating involves an intense elaborate linguistic processing, it was hypothesized that the translation process may estabiish linguistíc traces in memory which may, then, be used in language production, as in the case of this study - summary writing. In order to verify this hypothesis, the summaries produced after the activities of reading and translating were compared with summaries produced after a simple reading comprehension activity. Twenty-seven advanced undergraduate Brazilian students, from the English departments of two Brazilian universities (UFSC and UFRGS), participated in the study. Data were collected in two sessions. In the first session leamers read a text in English, translated into Portuguese and wrote a summary in English (T1). In the second session learners read a text in English and wrote a summary in English as well (T2). In both tasks learners produced summaries without having access to the original text. The results provide ground for a reapraisal of the role of translation in foreign language acquisition. Despite the small differences, the data allows us to conclude that the translation activity produced different results ín the summaries than the reading activity. It appears that translation leads learners to articulate more their language system, and makes them notice some features of the input material and include these features in the summaries. However, more studies are needed before generalizations can be made in relation to the results of this research.