An Activity Theoretical Investigation into the Dominant Composition and Translation Activities of EFL learners across Persian and English

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Yusef Rajabi ¹

1 - English Department, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Received: 2018-10-03 Accepted : 2018-10-03 Published : 2018-04-01

Keywords: Translation quality, Persuasive writing, Activity Theory, Dominant activities, Self-regulated strategy development,

Abstract :

The present study aimed at investigating the impact of a genre-specific strategy-based instructional inter- vention on translation quality, dominant translation and writing activities in the persuasive essays of a group of EFL learners within the perspective of activity theory. The main purpose of the study was to see, taking translation as a sort of writing in its own right, whether the kind of instructional intervention im- plemented influence the writing and translation activities of learners similarly or not. To this end, 22 in- termediate EFL learners received 10 sessions of self-regulatory strategy development (SRSD) instruction accompanied by some translation exercises on persuasive writing. Based on the results, SRSD did not have any significant effect on the translation quality of the students. However, the comparison of pretest and posttest scores on the persuasive probe and translation test revealed that the genre-specific strategy instruction influenced the dominant translation and writing activities of the participants. The findings pointed to the fact that the issues related to the students' new learning histories changed the nature of their activity systems both in persuasive essay writing and translation.

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