Translation as an Aid in the EFL Classroom EF

Teachers are generally agreed that affective variables in second language acquisition are fundamental. How these variables should be measured, however, is another cup of tea: there is strong disagreement regarding the validity of research studies in this area.

Some researchers view aptitude at language learning as a prerequisite for successful foreign-language acquisition. But then, all of us learned at least one language well: we therefore must all have aptitude at language learning--and yet many of us do not readily seem to learn a foreign language. To complicate matters further, many learners who test high on a linguistic aptitude scale do poorly at learning another language than the native one; and vice versa, low scorers on aptitude may become proficient in other languages.

Could it be that the determining factor in foreign language learning is the didactic methodology? The last two or three decades have seen a plethora of methodological approaches. Was each one successively discarded because judged inadequate? How about the current method being hyped? Could it be that there is no ideal way to learn a language and that learning capacity is an individual characteristic? Given the fact that with each formal method there are some who take to it as to water and others who fail miserably, individual learning style may indeed play a prominent role in language acquisition.

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ful sequence prevailed throughout the continuity of the world of experience. Acquisition (subconscious) was stressed, rather than learning (conscious). Little by little, creativity was allowed. Grammar was taught inductively at first, explicitly thereafter. Today, this model is the most prevalent in the teaching of EFL in England and America, and by English and American teachers abroad. As Burt and Duley (1983) remarked: "A natural language environment is necessary for optimal language acquisition" (p.39). Furthermore, "Language learners attend to, and acquire, the language and dialect spoken by people with whom they identify" (Hence, the tragedy of the dialectal languages sung--or, rather, screamed--by modern rock-and-roll, heavy metal, or rap types). Already in the mid-1960s, Leonard Newmark disputed the discrete-point philosophy which purported to teach language by disposing of, one at a time, an inventory of items (phonemes, morphemes, words, phrase structures, transformations, functions, notions, situations, etc.) Newmark stated very clearly that "acquisition cannot be simply additive; complex bits of language are learned a whole chunk at a time." He understood the importance of episodic organization and the fundam
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