Pedagogical Translation and Mother Tongue in the Teaching and Learning of English for Science and Technology

Abstract

This study addresses the use of translation as an auxiliary pedagogical method in the teaching and learning of Languages for Specific Purposes. This article will confirm that, provided certain teaching and learning conditions are met, translation might most profitably be employed in language teaching as one teaching tool among others. At the same time that pedagogical translation has come to regain respectability in the process of teaching and learning foreign languages, another issue is also coming to the fore: the repositioning of the mother tongue’s role in the foreign languages teaching and learning process. These ideas have been advanced by several scholars, confirmed by the author’s experience and are also corroborated by the survey conducted for the purposes of this study.