Abstract
At every level of education, from early years to postgraduate, students can arrive in the UK (or US) classroom with little or no English language ability. It is impossible for teachers to have knowledge of every first language that students bring into the classroom and thus they may rely on a computer-aided translation tool so that their students can have access to the English needed in all subjects across the curriculum. At the same time, students need to move from basic English skills in listening, speaking, reading and writing towards the subtleties of academic English which they must achieve in order to reach the UK government’s required standards in English at every level of assessment. Using her extensive knowledge of the challenges that students learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) and their teachers face in the classroom situation and the English needed in assessments, the author examines possible benefits of computer-aided translation tools such as Google Translate and Talking Pen and outlines some of the problems and drawbacks with such tools that create barriers to acquiring full academic fluency, thus posing challenges to future translation tool developers.
Highlights
In today’s global environment, there are many reasons for the movement of people from one country to another, for example as economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, university students or for employment
Are the translation tools available sufficiently effective to ensure that all students learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) will have academic success at all levels of assessment? Whilst investigating the benefits and drawbacks of some of the computer-aided translation tools available, this paper will consider the challenges faced by mainstream teachers and the students learning EAL in order to participate in lessons and achieve success in assessments, before making suggestions for computer aided translation tool developers to consider in the future
The author shares some of the challenges she has observed in her teaching: www.aetic.theiaer.org
Summary
In today’s global environment, there are many reasons for the movement of people from one country to another, for example as economic migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, university students or for employment. If these children are of school age, by law, in the United Kingdom (and USA) they are expected to attend an age-appropriate school where they will be taught in English The languages that these children speak (L1) are usually different from English. In one school alone in Leeds, Yorkshire, 81 different languages are spoken This creates a challenge for teaching and learning when students have to learn the English language at the same time as they are being taught the contents of Dianne Excell, “Some Problems in Using Computer-Aided Translation Tools to Facilitate Second Language Fluency in Education”, Annals of Emerging Technologies in Computing (AETiC), Print ISSN: 2516-0281, Online ISSN: 2516-029X, pp. Are the translation tools available sufficiently effective to ensure that all students learning EAL will have academic success at all levels of assessment? Whilst investigating the benefits and drawbacks of some of the computer-aided translation tools available, this paper will consider the challenges faced by mainstream teachers and the students learning EAL in order to participate in lessons and achieve success in assessments, before making suggestions for computer aided translation tool developers to consider in the future
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