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

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The results have shown that some types of errors still occur,
and the most common one is related to the way students perceive
ngps formed by two or more
words.
Our main concern has been to concentrate our research
on the problems
posed by ngps as reflected in EL I students'
translations. The first step taken to gather actual
and useful
information about areas of difficulty
in the translation of texts
administered to EL I students was to change the usual sequence
of comments on grammatical points and vocabulary followed by the
translation. The text was usually read by the teacher, aloud,
while students foil owed the reading silently; then, they started
translating the text, either in groups or in di vi dually. The
teacher's help was limited to "information concerning the
translation of isolated words, that is to say, it equalled the
same sort of help which
students might get from a bilingual
dictionary. Disagreement among the members
of a group as to a
certain aspect of translation often occurred and as a result
members of the same group did.not always render identical'
translations. On several occasions one group rendered as many
different translations as the number of members in that group.
After the groups had finished their translations,
they were handed to the teacher; each student, or each member
of a group, usually provided two copies of the same translation
so that one of them might be kept in the teacher's
possession.
The translation of the whole text was followed by
comments on vocabulary, grammatical points, exercises and
question?, devised to test students' comprehension of the text
and reinforce some important grammatical aspect.