Improving reading comprehension by including translation as a task in tefl

Abstract

On one hand, the problem of this study was based on the relation of structure and content and their interaction with previous knowledge in reading comprehension. Thus, an efficient reader should be able to deal with different types of texts and content by using different strategies, being able to activate certain previous knowledge for understanding a text. On the other hand there are several bibliographic evidences that guide to think that translation could help to improve reading comprehension. Therefore, our study establishes a general objective: determining if including pedagogical translation as a task in TEFL classes improves students’ reading comprehension of complex and ambiguous texts, showing the type of texts that are more advisable to be used in pedagogical translation when performing reading comprehension tasks in EFL classes and to prescribe the process that the task should follow in order to use pedagogical translation as a task in EFL classes according to the obtained study results. The approach of our study followed is quantitative; the type of study is explicative; the design was experimental; the type of experiment we used was pure experiment; the design for the experiment involves pre test-post test and control group design; in a field experiment. Our sample includes two independent samples: control sample and the experimental sample. Each one is obtained by using intentional sampling. The population is 75 students. Therefore, each sample had 25 students. The instruments are: pre and post tests, pre and post questioners, and quantitative observation. The instruments are validated in a pre experiment carried out in the piloting stage before the experiment itself. The results of our experiment demonstrated a significant improvement in reading comprehension of experimental group participants when they used pedagogical translation, even though, participants in the control group, which did not use pedagogical translation, has a certain improvement in their reading comprehension.