Teaching English through Translation



Teaching English through Translation

Teaching is a concept that cannot be limited to either art or science in any specific way. It is part of everyone's everyday life. The art of teaching requires a lot of diligence, and a person who teaches should enjoy and always give the best performance everyday they teach. There must also be an atmosphere that gives students a chance to be creative as well as enjoyment in being taught. Therefore everyone involved is working towards and attaining a common goal, to learn. It is both a combination of both art and science.

Teaching needs skills so does art. Skills that are involved with teaching are the learning, decision making, conceptual, as well as human relations. To perform teaching skills correctly you must have the clarity on the concept of where, why, how, and what. It is the knowledge and technical skills that are important to the functions and it increases efficiency. Since teaching exists everyday, this compromises the dealing with human relations in an art, which also makes teaching too. The importance of decision-making is a very important aspect in teaching, and it can be stated as an art because it takes a lot of facts and analysis.

Teaching also requires information from many various subjects from different areas, as does art. To teach efficiently and effectively it requires information from the other fields. Information is based on the what, where, how, and when the information should be taught based on the skill level of the students, and also by using the most updated information that is available. All of this requires knowledge. Teaching also requires creativity, just as art does. The aspect of creativity is very important in teaching. A teacher must be able to think of new ways to keep the students interested in learning and wanting to learn more (Numan, 1989). A student does not want to go to class and be bored; there creativity requires a teacher to use their artistic skills to create unique learning. As each person has their own way to personalize art, each teacher has their own style of teaching, which is also true when it comes to performance. As with art, there is good, bad and average, which are indicators of a teacher's performance as well.

There are numerous ways of conveying the meaning of an unknown word. These include a definition in the second language, a demonstration, a picture or a diagram, a real object, L2 context clues, or an L1 translation. In terms of the accuracy of conveying meaning, none of these ways is intrinsically better than any of the others. It all depends on the particular word concerned. However, studies comparing the effectiveness of various methods for learning always come up with the result that L1 translation is the most effective. This is probably because L1 translations are usually clear, short and familiar, qualities which are very important in effective definitions (Newmark, 1988).

Once learners of English have achieved some basic skill in English, they ...