The Role of Translation as an EFL Facilitator in Secondary Schools

Abstract

This article aims to show that translation plays a significant role in EFL classes in secondary schools. Translation enables students to compare two linguistic structures, build their capacity for contrastive analysis, and better understand a foreign language (i.e., English). The qualitative method is used in this research. Students’ comprehension of the English language was assessed through a text and questions written in English only. Their copies were then collected. Subsequently, the French and English versions of the same text and questions were given to the same students for a second assessment. As a result, students performed better after reading both the English and French versions of the text and questions. The findings of this research include the following: (1) Translation improves students’ comprehension of the English language and increases their English exam scores; (2) translation into the students’ official language (i.e., French) should therefore be promoted in EFL classes; (3) the challenges involved in translation exercises in secondary schools include syntactic and structural questions, translation procedures, the correspondence between English and French tenses in specific contexts, and lexical semantics. These findings imply that EFL teachers would greatly benefit from including a translation component in their lessons.