Abstract
The free availability of online machine translation (OMT) on the Internet via computers, tablets and smartphones makes it convenient for use by language students of all levels. Google Translate has been widely listed as an independent language learning (ILL) resource and we cannot deny its role for ongoing education. We are aware of the fact that this developing piece of technology was not designed with language learning in mind and, as a consequence, has limited current abilities depending on the language pair, language direction, genre, etc. However, as educators, we cannot help but wonder how the students use it independently and what pedagogical implications this may have in the language class. This study sets to analyse how language learners assess the usefulness of machine translation output and what they think about the use of OMT (in combination with other online language resources) for oral and written comprehension and production (e.g. writing and translation). This will help determining whether its use by language learners can be counterproductive or whether, if used wisely, can assist ILL and help boosting language instant communication.
Highlights
The free availability of online machine translation (OMT) on the Internet via computers, tablets and smartphones makes it convenient for use by language students of all levels
Due to the fact that OMT is omnipresent and is an unavoidable part of our everyday lives, as educators we are aware of its potential and limitations as a language learning tool (McCarthy 2004; Mundt and Groves 2016; Niño 2008; Somers 2003) and about its popularity amongst students who will continue to use it as an independent language learning (ILL) resource in order to aid comprehension and/or production
The aim of this study is to investigate how the language students assess the usefulness of machine translation output and how they use OMT as an ILL resource, what are their preferences and avoidances, in particular in relation to reading and listening comprehension into English, and audio, voice and written translation into the target language of study
Summary
Exploring the use of online machine translation for independent language learning Ana Niño*. Due to the fact that OMT is omnipresent and is an unavoidable part of our everyday lives, as educators we are aware of its potential and limitations as a language learning tool (McCarthy 2004; Mundt and Groves 2016; Niño 2008; Somers 2003) and about its popularity amongst students who will continue to use it as an ILL resource in order to aid comprehension and/or production. The use of machine translation as CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) was already pointed out by Niño (2009) and, more recently by Tsai (2019) In this context, OMT as CALL takes the form of a multimodal integrative environment that can encourage meaningful collaborative language practice interactions with various ILL resources and peer students.
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