THE ROLE OF TRANSLATION IN CLASSROOM 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 K 12.
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 there is a use for at least some limited translation activities in the ESL class. To this end, the paper reviews to the literature related to whether language learning theory supports in- class translation and whether empirical investigations of the strategy have shown it to be effective. The paper ends with the formulation of conclusions and recommendations for future research in the area based on the reviewed material.
Language Learning Theory: Role of Translation