The Effect of Translation as a Noticing Strategy on Learning Complex Grammatical Structures by EFL Learners

Translation practice as a cognitive strategy to notice the gap between what learners know and what they do not might contribute to the acquisition of grammatical structures in a language learning. The present study investigated the effect of literal translation as a noticing technique on learning the participial phrases and absolute constructions in English. Forty EFL students were non-randomly selected based on the enrollment procedures of their university. A pre-test was administered to check participant’s knowledge of targeted structures prior to the study. Translating 10 participial phrases and absolute constructions from English language into Persian while thinking aloud before deductive instruction was the treatment in the experimental group, and deductive instruction of targeted structures with exercises was applied to the control group for several sessions. Running related parametric statistics, the results revealed that the use of translation significantly affected participants’ noticing and learning the targeted grammatical structures. The implications for learners, teachers, and material developers will be explained.