Machine translation as a tool for foreign language learning in secondary schools: A necessary dialogue

Abstract

In an educational context that promotes the “connected classroom” concept, with laptops, mobile technologies and Internet access, machine translation is still forbidden or allowed for limited purposes only. However, with the power and accessibility of this tool, it is safe to assume that students will keep making use of it. This paper seeks to explore the uses and practices of secondary-school students learning a new language, particularly while developing their writing skills, with the aid of machine translation. This is a multi-site (two schools in Catalonia), multilingual (Catalan, Spanish and English), qualitative-interpretive case study carried out from an emic perspective. A range of instruments were used to collect data from teachers and students: semi-structured interview, classroom observation, and screencasting. We built a corpus of 1321 minutes of audio from the interviews, 1020 minutes from classroom observation and 429 minutes of screencast videos of students’ activity. Using a qualitative and inductive data analysis and data triangulation, we (a) assessed the teachers’ tolerance level for machine translation use, and (b) described the students’ uses of machine translation with specific purposes (text comprehension, production or proofreading). This took into account different sophistication levels, according to the verification strategies employed by students. To conclude, we suggest that these language resources be included in school programs to train students on how to use them critically and to encourage practices such as pre-editing text input to obtain optimal results.

Keywords: connected classroom, language learning, machine translation.