Translation competence as a cognitive catalyst for multiliteracy – research findings and their implications for l2 writing and translation instruction

Abstract

Translating from the L1 into the L2 has been rejected in the foreign language instruction paradigms following the grammar translation method and has more or less been banned from L2 teaching (cf. Cook 2010; Liu 2009; Turnbull and Dailey-O’Cain 2009a, p. 3 ff). One of the reasons is the assumption that maximum exposure to the L2 is the best way to learn it and that the L1, if resorted to, interferes negatively with L2 development. This assumption may explain why the use of the L1 and translation had received little attention in L2 writing research until the 1980s (Rijlaarsdam 2002, p. ix; Liu 2009, p. 12), even though there is a lack of evidence that resorting to the L1 in L2 language production is harmful (Cook 2010, p. 99).