towards an analysis of errors made by university students ... - DSpace

59
identification of the structural elements in a ngp;
c) students are not able to avoid difficult areas of
grammar -as it is claimed they can do in subjective tests 6
- since they are committed to an authentic piece of written
language in its entirety. Even omissions in a translated text
can be useful, as they point to areas of difficulty in their
own way.
We must not lose the sight of the fact, either,
that
translation as used at the UFPB is by.no means an
unsupported
activity. 7 It is also useful to remember that translation
involves the use of mother tongue by both students and teacher,
and as both are normally non-native speakers of English discuss'.ion
of the more difficult aspects is facilitated. Nevertheless, the
language teacher.will still need to-be familiar with the concepts
necessary to assess and isolate specific types of errors. 8
Our justification
of translation at the UFPB, then, may
be summed up as follows. We feel that evaluation is an integral
part of teaching. There is often a need for summative,
end-ofcourse,
evaluation, as a means of establishing the success or
otherwise of teaching techniques, course books, students
themselves, and so on; but this is not our primary
concern.
What we require is some form of on-going, formative evaluation
that we can employ throughout the course as a way of monitoring
specific language problems. If the purpose of an activity affects
the content and the content in turn affects the techniques
employed, then translation would seem to be the most
suitable
technique for our purpose.