This topic comes up often when I conduct professional development sessions.  Can’t we just provide translations for our emergent bilinguals or our multilingual learners?  And the answer is no.

Translations are not a language acquisition strategy.  Whether you are teaching in a Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) classroom, an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom, a Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) program, or a World Language (WL) program, translations lead students to ignore the language of instruction in favor of the easier language. 

Remember that everything in nature looks for the easiest way to accomplish things.  Water flows in the path of least resistance.  We, as adults, also look for the easiest way to do things and in fact, we have a positive term for it… efficiency.  The person who can do the most in the same 24 hours is praised for being the most efficient, which means that that person finds the easiest way to accomplish his tasks so that they can get the tasks completed faster.  Even the brain is efficient by pruning neurons that are not used.  That’s why very few of us can do the calculus problems we once did in high school or college.  Children are no different.  If emergent bilinguals know that they can ignore the English and get the same material in their home language or if our English-proficient students who are learning a Language Other Than English (LOTE) can ignore the LOTE and get the same material in English, they will choose the easier language and ignore the new one.

I once walked into an 8th grade, English Language Arts classroom for an observation where there was a mix of students, with some being completely English-proficient and with others being emergent bilinguals.  They were reading Night by Elie Wiesel, an excellent choice for the grade level.  However, the emergent bilingual students were reading the book in their native language. They used Google Translate to translate the questions and their own answers into English.  All the students were learning about the Holocaust, but they were not learning English.

Similarly, in a high school Spanish AP class I visited, the English-proficient students were taking the Spanish passages and answer choices and translating them into English before answering.  The kids were motivated students, having reached AP status but they still chose what was most efficient so that they could concentrate on other classes, extracurriculars, college applications, etc. Needless to say, their AP scores reflected their efforts.

Instead of translations, we have to provide each of our students access points to the readings.  This may include vocabulary introduction, text engineering, visuals, schema- building activities, graphic organizers, or oral reading groups.  The support that students receive should match their proficiency level… All students should struggle with the material and that struggle should lead to success for every student. In other words, all students should engage in productive struggle. 

Many teachers will cite scholars who advocate for translanguaging.  Let me be clear. I also advocate for translanguaging.  Translanguaging is a way to build metacognition so that students can more efficiently transfer knowledge from one language to another.  Translating does not do that.  In my next article, we will talk about some strategies for translanguaging.  But until then, please do not provide your students with translations or with methods that facilitate translation such as Google Translate.  It does not work!

If you are interested in additional support at your school or district, please feel free to reach out to me at arm977@mail.harvard.edu.