The Effect of Using Translation on Learning Grammatical Structures: A Case Study of Iranian Junior High School Students

The role of L1 in second/foreign language learning has been the subject of muchdebate and controversy. This article reports on a piece of research carried out in ajunior high school in Isfahan, Iran. This study was conducted to examine the effectof using translation from L1 to L2 on the improvement of EFL learners' languageaccuracy. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 62 students in grade three of juniorhigh school were chosen by means of administering a researcher made pretest. Theparticipants were divided into a control group and an experimental group. Theexperimental group received grammar exercises in translating some phrases andsentences from Persian into English related to the intended grammaticalstructures during the study period while the control group just did their textbookexercises. At the end, a post-test was given to the students and the mean scores ofthe two groups were identified. Using t-test revealed that the treatment had aconsiderable effect on students' language accuracy.

Keywords:

First Language (L1) , Second Language (L2) , Foreign Language (FL) , Translation , Grammatical accuracy