The Use of Pedagogical Translation in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom: Teaching Implementation for Secondary Education.

Abstract

Using the students’ mother tongue in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom has always been considered a controversial topic in the educational field. Currently, the vast majority of teachers argue that the use of the First Language (L1) has more detrimental than beneficial effects as a consequence of the erroneous belief that Pedagogical Translation (PT) is the same as the old-fashioned Grammar-Translation Method. Nevertheless, the number of scholars who advocate for the application of PT and, hence, the L1 in the foreign language classes has increased considerably in recent years. The present study focuses on the implementation and evaluation of PT as a didactic resource in an EFL class of a Spanish secondary school. To this end, a didactic proposal which contains PT activities was applied in an EFL class of 1st of ESO, whereas another didactic proposal without PT activities was applied to a different EFL class of the same educational level. Thus, the aim of this paper is to determine the effectiveness of PT depending on whether the group in which PT activities were implemented shows a higher scoring as compared with the other group. Furthermore, this study also analyzes the attitude that the students have towards the presence of their mother tongue in the EFL class and their level of satisfaction regarding PT activities. In essence, the results obtained in this study prove that PT activities can be an effective educative resource in terms of learning vocabulary and that, in general, students with a low level of English have a positive opinion regarding the use of their mother tongue in the EFL class.