Measuring the impact of translation on the accuracy and fluency of vocabulary acquisition of English

Abstract

This article assesses the impact of translation on the acquisition of vocabulary for higher-intermediate level students of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). The use of translation is a relevant issue in the research of Second Language (L2) acquisition and different authors provide arguments on both sides of the issue. Language technologies serve this issue in both the usability of automatic translation and the automatic detection of lexical phenomena. This paper will explore translation as it affects the acquisition of new words in context when students are given real texts retrieved from the Internet in a web-based interface. The students can instantly obtain the dictionary definition of a word and its translation to their native language. This platform can accurately measure how much each student relies on translation and compare this to their accuracy and fluency on a lexical retrieval task using words seen in the texts. Results show that abundant use of translation may increase accuracy in the short term, but in the longer term, it negatively affects accuracy and possibly fluency. However, students who use translation in moderation seem to benefit the most in this lexical task. This paper provides a focused and precise way to measure the relevant variables for each individual student, and new findings that contribute to our understanding of the impact of the use of translation in language learning.