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Google Translate search strategies

used by learners of Spanish L3:

A complex lexico-morpho-syntactic

weave of trial and error Estrategias de búsqueda en el traductor de Google usadas por estudiantes de español L3: una compleja trama léxico-morfo-sintáctica de prueba y error

Kent Fredholm

Karlstad University (Sweden),

Department for Pedagogical Studies

Uppsala University (Sweden),

Department for Modern Languages

Kent.Fredholm@kau.se

Recepción del artículo: 1 de abril de 2020

Aceptación: 23 de junio de 2020

doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2021.72.926 [ 10 ] Kent Fredholm

Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada

, año 39, número 72, enero de 2021, pp. 9-48 doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2021.72.926

Abstract

This article presents a study on Google

Translate search strategies among 16

Swedish senior high school students

(age 17-18) engaging in writing tasks during their sixth year studying Span ish L3. The students wrote on laptops with Internet access and were allowed to use Google Translate to search for

Spanish words. Analyses of approxi-

mately 43 hours of screen recordings covering the writing of 57 essays re- veal a complex weave of Google

Translate search strategies performed

in Swedish, English, and Spanish. The strategies combine lexical and mor- phosyntactic searches, ranging from single words to longer sequences of words. The searches were frequently characterised by trial-and-error-based approaches that comprised numerous control translations of already known words. The observations also reveal search behaviors interpreted as lack of trust among the students in the search results and in their own language skills.

Keywords:

Free online machine

translation; Spanish as a foreign language; foreign language learning; foreign language writing; comput er-assisted language learning

Resumen

Este artículo presenta un estudio so-

bre las estrategias de búsqueda en el traductor de Google empleadas por un grupo de 16 estudiantes suecos del ba chillerato (17 a 18 años de edad) en ejercicios de redacción realizados du- rante su sexto año de estudios de es- pañol L3. Los estudiantes utilizaron ordenadores portátiles con acceso a internet y podían usar el traductor de

Google para buscar palabras en espa-

ñol. El análisis de aproximadamente

43 horas de grabación de las pantallas

durante la escritura de 57 ensayos re- veló una compleja trama de estrategias de búsqueda en sueco, inglés y espa-

ñol. Las estrategias incluyeron búsque-

das léxicas y morfosintácticas, desde palabras sueltas hasta secuencias más largas. Las búsquedas frecuentemente se caracterizaron por seguir métodos de prueba y error que incluían numero- sas traducciones de control de palabras que los estudiantes ya conocían. Las observaciones evidenciaron también ciertos comportamientos en la búsque- da que pueden interpretarse como falta de con?anza de los estudiantes en los resultados de su búsqueda así como en su propio conocimiento de la lengua.

Palabras clave:

traducción automáti ca; español como lengua extranjera; aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras; escritura en lenguas extranjeras; enseñanza de lenguas asistida por computadora Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, año 39, número 72, enero de 2021, pp. 9-48 doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2021.72.926 Google Translate search strategies used by learners of Spanish L3 [ 11 ]

1. Introduction

The frequent use of Google Translate (

gt ) and similar sites offer- ing free online machine translation ( fomt ) by foreign language learners is a well-known reality among language teachers. Ducar and Schocket (2018: 779) called gt "an inescapable reality in to- day's second language (L2) classroom", and studies have shown that language learners frequently resort to fomt tools even when instructed not to (O'Neill, 2019; Fredholm, 2015a; Garcia and Pena, 2011; Niño, 2009; Williams, 2006; Luton, 2003). Machine translation use among L2 and L3 learners has been addressed in a small but growing number of studies. However, despite the om- nipresence of easily available machine translation services such as gt, the search strategies employed by language learners when using gt during written text production have not been studied in detail so far, apart from a few studies that did not focus exclusively on gt search strategies. Fredholm (2015a) observed spontaneous use of online resources among upper secondary students writing in Spanish L3 and found that different machine translation sites were used for almost half the word count in each text. In a partially similar study, Knospe, Sullivan, Malmqvist, and Valfridsson (2019) observed the use of online sources among German L3 learners and described the use of gt by some of them. Although the stud- ies above mentioned provide a general outline of fomt use among young L3 writers, no study so far has described the complex inter- play of different search strategies. This article delves further into fomt use among Spanish L3 learners, exploring in detail their gt search strategies. It gives insights into the wide variety of gt search strategies used by a group of Swedish learners of Spanish L3. These insights are important for researchers in the language education and foreign language writing ? elds, and for practicing language teachers who face a competing source of information in their classrooms, in the form of a digital translation interface. Hyland (2016: 40) stated that a literate person needs to have "control over a range of printed and electronic media", and con- Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, año 39, número 72, enero de 2021, pp. 9-48 doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2021.72.926 [ 12 ] Kent Fredholm cluded that these have affected our ways of writing and accessing information, giving "writing teachers new challenges and oppor- tunities for classroom practice" (ibid.). The use of fomt together with an increase in computer-based writing instead of paper-and- pen-based approaches is such a challenge but, perhaps, also an opportunity for language teachers and students to access a wider range of approaches to tackle language-related issues in foreign language writing. gt is not the only resource of language learners to solve a linguistic conundrum; nevertheless, this study focuses on gt usage as this is one of the most easily available and most frequently used language resources (Aiken, 2019), and a topic of much concern to many language teachers. Anecdotes about faulty translations are common, but the accuracy of gt searches has in- creased drastically after the introduction of Google's Neural Ma- chine Translation (gnmt) in 2016, which reduced the number of translation errors in as much as 55% to 85%, depending on the particular language pair (Le & Schuster, 2016; Wu et al., 2016). When gnmt was implemented, these effects concerned translations between eight different languages, including Spanish and English, but not Swedish. Clarifying the strategies used by students for searching lexical and morphosyntactic information in schools with free access to Google Translate can help foreign language teachers to better un- derstand the needs of their students and serve as valuable input for further studies on how language learners tackle problems in modern settings of foreign language writing.

2. Purpose and research questions

The purpose of this study is to give a detailed account of gt search strategies used by a group of Spanish L3 learners during essay writing, and discuss the implications of the observed strategies for foreign language teaching. The word strategy is used herein to denote all actions performed to search for lexical and morpho- Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada, año 39, número 72, enero de 2021, pp. 9-48 doi: 10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2021.72.926 Google Translate search strategies used by learners of Spanish L3 [ 13 ] syntactic information needed to communicate a desired content in essays written in Spanish L3. Explaining how students solve problems in a digital writing situation further deepens the insights from earlier studies such as those by Knospe et al. (2019) and Fredholm (2015a). No earlier study aimed to clarify in detail how L3 learners use gt affordances (cf. Gibson, 1986; Adolph & Kretch, 2015) during writing. 1 Thus, this study contributes to improve the understanding of foreign lan- guage writing researchers and teachers of the complex interplay of search strategies used by L3 learners. The study addressed the following research questions: What gt search strategies do Spanish L3 learners use to search for lexical and morphosyntactic information during essay wri- ting? What potential implications for foreign language teaching can be drawn from the gt search strategies observed? The observed search strategies are described in §5 and their impli- cations for foreign language teaching are discussed in §6.

3. Earlier studies on machine translation use in foreign language

writing

Foreign language writing (

flw) is a vast research ? eld that stud- ies different aspects of L2 and L3 writing. After Flower and Hayesquotesdbs_dbs8.pdfusesText_14

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