One of the decisions that must be made when structuring a course on a foreign language is how to convey the messages in the language to the students. Here there are two opposing schools of thought: those who believe that the use of the bridge language, or translation, to facilitate comprehension by the students is not permissible, versus those who argue that messages can be partially translated to facilitate comprehension by the students. Text comprehension is indeed a point of great importance, and it is therefore normal that different opinions are confronted around it. Understanding the text, whether oral or written, is the sine qua non for the information to be believed. We will not be able to effectively learn or acquire a word of which we have not understood the meaning, much less will it be possible to retain some information from a substantially misunderstood text.
It was during the 1990s, in research conducted in bilingual countries (such as Canada), that the importance of comprehension for language acquisition was fully understood. The research found that by simply immersing the students in a language that was unfamiliar to them and therefore incomprehensible, in an unstructured way, good linguistic progress did not occur. The experiment consisted of exposing children to non-language lessons (but related to a curricular subject) in an unfamiliar language. The exposure was massive and consistent, yet it was found that the pupils did not improve their knowledge of the language in a really significant way, certainly less than would have been expected. In other words, the exposure, while massive and continuous, was not enough on its own to make the pupils fluent or bilingual. On the contrary, better progress was found where, alongside regular exposure, there was such a structuring of the lessons that the students were able to understand the content. Both from the point of view of the effectiveness of language teaching and from the point of view of motivation, creating the conditions for the learner to understand is really the first objective of the teacher. Translation, or linking two words (belonging to two different codes) is a different thing from comprehension, whereby you link a word and a concept. You can understand, without being able to translate. But there are even more subtle differences. First, translation is a conscious operation. Typically, you translate word for word, or at least sentence for sentence. Understanding, on the other hand, can also be implicit and global. One can understand the content while not being certain of the meaning of individual words. In 1979, Oller introduced the concept of Expectancy Grammar as an element that underlies comprehension processes: the ability to hypothesize what will be said or written in a given context.
What makes it possible to make effective anticipations?
Situational awareness (topic, speakers’ intentions…)
Redundancy, i.e. additional information available in the context, in the context and in the paratext
Knowledge of the world, or encyclopedia
Anticipation is an essential mechanism for the comprehension process, in native language as well as in L2. Our brain collects all the elements at its disposal in order to make hypotheses that help us orient ourselves in the text, disambiguate homophones, create hierarchies and relationships.
While we listen to or read other words, our brain tries to predict what will appear later in the text: this is the mechanism of “understanding”. Not only do we recognize words by their global form (while reading) or by their incipit (while listening), but we also try to construct the meaning of sentences before having read or listened to their conclusion. It is because of these unconscious operations of anticipation that we are able to sustain the speed of a conversation and give answers in real time.
It is very important to plan and structure very carefully the conditions under which students are exposed to the foreign language, in order to help them understand at least globally, without the need for translation.
If a child knows that everything he hears will be translated, he will not make the effort to understand the message directly in English: this is absolutely intuitive. But that’s not the only problem. Translation is actually the addition of an unnecessary cognitive step (word-to-word), which mediates instead of aiming at the spontaneous emergence of meaning, that is, thing-to-word correspondence.
In this article, we’ll talk about some tricks that we can adopt to help children anticipate and better understand messages in L2, without having to resort to translation in order to arrive at a general understanding of their meaning.
Giving additional information
Let’s take an example that everyone has experienced: let’s say we’re watching a movie in English and we realize that we can’t understand almost anything. We don’t even hear the individual words, but apart from a few that we can isolate, we perceive a string of sounds in which we can’t distinguish where words and sentences begin and end. Try watching the same movie with English subtitles… and we notice that we are able to recognize words much better by hearing them. Why? Because reading was faster than listening (this happens to trained adults usually) so the brain recognizes what it already knows is coming.
This is an extreme case, let’s try another example. Let’s compare watching a radio news bulletin (usually a difficult text) without directions, with a news bulletin in which you see pictures and captions that explain what the speaker is talking about. You will notice that you understand many more words and phrases. It’s kind of like moving through an unfamiliar place, but with landmarks.
Have you ever tried to read a passage without any information, and read the same passage, of which you have information about the text to which it belongs, the author’s intentions, the history of the main characters, etc.? With the same linguistic competence, understanding the same text will be much easier in the second case because the brain, on the basis of the information it has, will be able to make hypotheses more efficiently.
At the level of speech, think how much information you get from the tone of voice, mimicry, expressiveness (which give you information about the author’s intentions!).
The observation is always the same: having contextual, cultural, pragmatic information is very facilitating to understand the text without having to know the meaning of every word.
Elicitation
Elicitation is defined as all those activities aimed at stimulating students’ anticipation of the contents of a text, leading them to reflect on the elements of the “paratext”: titles, illustrations, captions, knowledge about the author, etc. Elicitation can also involve the exploration of key words.
By focusing on key words, the student can easily “construct” the meaning of the text. The key words do not necessarily have to be translated: we can have the students arrive at the meaning by proposing word-image or word-definition matches or by proposing cloze (words in context, where the context is simple sentences), for example. Facing the text with key words in mind is definitely an example of anticipation that helps comprehension.