Innovation in Language Learning

Machine translation, and specifically Google Translate, is increasingly becoming a favourite tool for languages users and in particular language learners. As it is freely available across a variety of platforms for both desktop and mobile devices, language students tend to excessively rely on it for solving their course assignments, which is ultimately detrimental to their language learning. However, the capabilities of machine translation can be exploited proactively within the curriculum and activities involving its use can be included in a course in order to increase language awareness and ultimately language learning. This paper is a contribution to the research field of machine translation in language pedagogy and reports the results of an empirical study conducted on students of an Arabic beginners course at a Swedish University. The study aimed at investigating students’ attitudes in conjunction with Google Translate, while at the same time taking advantage of GT’s capacities and limitations as a tool for language learning. A brief introduction covers some of the reasons for the GT inconsistencies in connection with translating Arabic and gives an overview of a number of previous studies concerned with the efficiency of GT when it comes to Arabic. Subsequently this paper presents two assignments given to the students at two separate moments of the term, accounting for their scope and execution. An analysis of the results follows, highlighting the students’ performance and reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of GT.

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