Using Translation to Drive Conceptual Development for Students Becoming Literate in English as an Additional Language
By Robert T. Jiménez, Samuel S. David, Keenan Fagan, Victoria J. Risko, M. Pacheco, Lisa C. Pray, Mark Gonzales. Research in the Teaching of English, 2015
112 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Literacy research has not yet revealed how bilingual learners develop coherent and robust theories of language. Translation, however, provides emergent bilinguals (EL students) with opportunities to develop metalinguistic awareness, which can lead to a more complete conceptual framework for thinking about language and literacy. This preliminary research study sought to formulate an instructional approach (TRANSLATE: Teaching Reading and New Strategic Language Approaches to English learners) focused on using translation to ultimately improve ELL students’ reading comprehension. Using design research methods and qualitative analytical techniques, researchers asked middle school students described as struggling readers to work collaboratively and use various strategies to translate key excerpts from their required English literature curriculum into Spanish. Analysis of students’ statements, decision making, and interaction indicated that students’ conceptual understandings about language played an important role in their learning. Students reflected on the nature of vocabulary, syntax, and the ways that different languages communicate ideas. These findings extend conversations in literacy studies concerning the unique affordances of bilingualism to increase metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, known contributors to higher levels of reading comprehension.
Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Literary Theory
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/71c09e1366757193d76ea4d81e21364cc75e89d5
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Citations in the corpus
- Across Languages, Modes, and Identities: Bilingual Adolescents’ Multimodal Codemeshing in the Literacy Classroom (2015, background): “Recent work on code-switching (Martínez, 2010), language brokering (Coyoca & Lee, 2009), and translation (Jiménez et al., 2015) all suggest these practices’ potential for making meaning in classrooms when English is not “bracketed off,” and teachers encourage the strategic use of multiple…”