From the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
30 October 2019
Kimberly Skjelde, PhD Candidate, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway
What do Norwegian EFL learners do?
The study I will present examined how first-year students taking a college preparatory English course chose to translate cognates present in academic vocabulary in English. A group of 151 first-year upper secondary students completed a 60-item translation task. The research was conducted in classroom settings in the Western regions of Norway.
Student translations were analyzed by the extent of cognate, non-cognate, or blank responses. Cognate translations were further analyzed for spelling and word-class correctness. On average, participants used cognate forms to translate a majority of the target words and were mostly able to use them correctly. However, there was substantial variation within the participant group and significant differences between strict and lenient scores.