The use of translation activities in a 9th grade EFL classroom: testing the improvement of reading skills

Abstract

This paper aims to test if translation activities are effective in EFL classroom of a public school in Brazil. There are ample debates on the use of the translation in the English as a Foreign Languages classrooms, and in the communicative approach era a lot of taboo is also faced by teachers, who tend to be unsure whether to use this tool or not. Most teachers do not use the translation in their classes because they fear being judged, since the translation has not been seen as a good tool for teaching, within language academies in general. We intend to identify extent to which translation activities can be used. The tentative is to describe which aspects seem to improve reading skill.