The Future of Education

This paper studies translation and the use of L1 as a pedagogical and learning tool in beginning and intermediate Spanish language classes for native students of English. Overall, students have been discouraged to translate from English (L1) to Spanish (L2), and vice versa, especially because the method of thinking, speaking and writing in English first and then translating to Spanish usually has been considered counterproductive. At the same time, students have been told not to translate from Spanish to English if they can guess the meaning. There are, however, exceptions to the belief that translation using the learner's mother tongue inherently and necessarily hinders the acquisition of the four skills in second-language learning. Some of the exceptions are grammatical aspects such as the sentence structure involving the verb "gustar" and the different constructions of "se." When teaching "gustar" and other similarly functioning verbs, which work differently from the statement "I like ..." in English, literally translating example sentences written in Spanish to English (from the L2 to the L1) reduces confusion and helps students to correctly complete the subject-verb agreement as they write sentences in Spanish. The L2-to-L1 order of literal translation, which also serves as a contrastive analysis, is important because it will tell students what the grammatical subject is in the Spanish sentence. When it comes to teaching and learning the constructions of "se," including the impersonal se and what I call the 'accidental' se, translation becomes an indispensable tool. In the case of the latter, literal translation from the L2 to the L1 is essential in order to clarify the fact that the object and the subject in the English sentence correspond to the subject and the indirect object, respectively, in the Spanish sentence. Once students understand this fundamental difference, the L1-to-L2 translation as well as more liberal L2-to-L1 translation can be used repeatedly to reinforce the retention of the grammatical knowledge and to increase their fluency in both speaking and writing. 

Keywords: pedagogical translation, Spanish language classes;