ROLE OF TRANSLATION IN ESL LEARNING

The U.S. Department of Education (2000), in a report on ESL/EFL learning, noted that the need for educational services for Limited English Proficiency (LEP) students has grown tremendously in the past 10 years. In this regard, census figures for 1990 were said to show that parents characterized almost one million children between the ages of five and seven as speaking English "not well" or "not at all," representing an increase of about 25 percent over the 1980 figures. More current estimates place this figure at about 2.3 million LEP students in grades K12.

About three-fourths of these LEP students speak Spanish; the nine other largest groups, in descending order of size, are: Vietnamese, Hmong, Cantonese, Cambodian, Korean, Laotian, Navajo, Tagalog, and Russian. The Department of Education (2000) further states that demographic projections indicate that this diversity will continue with all groups growing larger throughout the twenty-first century.

The foregoing statistics highlight the importance of developing effective ESL practices. This paper examines the theoretical and empirical literature on one ESL strategy to determine its effectiveness; this is the strategy of teacher translation of instructional material (some or all) into the student's native language.

In particular, the paper attempts to determine whether there can be found theoretical and empirical support for the argument that t

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as compared to those who only spoke English. It was felt that several factors were responsible for the increased effectiveness of bilingual tutors such as similar sociocultural backgrounds and so forth. However, it was specifically noted by Akigbe (1977) that one of the areas where bilingual tutors were most effective was in terms of providing ESL students with translation of classroom rules, regulations, homework instructions, and similar information. These translation activities were said to increase students' understanding of what they were required to know and do in order to learn English. According to Akigbe (1977), analyses indicated that the bilingual tutor program was highly successful in several ways. Specifically, the program alleviated the failure ESL students were experiencing in their academic courses, lessened the burden of the ESL teacher, facilitated communication between the ESL department and the rest of the school, and provided needed services both for the ESL students and the various departments of the school. In the theoretical section of this paper it was noted that bilingual education programs were developed based on the notion that maximal learning for ESL students requires some sort of translation
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Approximate Word count = 3943
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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