Investigating the Impact of Translating Key Terms from L2 into L1 on Learners’ Grasp of Linguistic Concepts

Abstract

The use of translation in English language teaching has always been a matter of discussion. Teachers always get confused whether the first language should be used in the lessons or not. In this light, this paper research aims at investigating whether the translation of key terms from the second language into the first language would help first year learners at the English department of Mohamed Seddik Ben Yahia University, to get a better grasp of linguistics or not. In order to attain this objective, our study has followed a strong quasi-experimental design that involves a pre-test, a treatment, and later a post-test. The results has shown that there is no significant difference in the grasp of linguistics between the students who receive translated key terms into their first language and those who do not receive any. Hence, we have concluded that the English-only policy is sufficient for students to achieve a good understanding of the linguistic concepts and linguistics as a whole