English only or bilingual advantage? The effects of strategic translanguaging on EFL learners’ grammatical development
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Abstract
This study explores whether strategic translanguaging offers any bilingual advantage in terms of grammatical development of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study examines whether English-only grammar instruction is more effective than strategic translanguaging, in which Arabic is intentionally used to clarify grammatical concepts, contrast Arabic and English structures, explain terminology, assess comprehension, and address first-language-related difficulties. This study is based on the data obtained through a quantitative quasi-experimental pretest-post-test control-group design conducted with 35 Arabic speaking EFL learners from Abu Dhabi University. 18 participants took part in the English only instructional program and 17 participants participated in the strategic translanguaging instruction program. Before and after an 8-10 week intervention, 40 item grammar achievement test was administered. Independent-samples and paired-samples t-tests, as well as a 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA, were used to analyse the data. An ANCOVA was additionally conducted to compare post-test performance between the two instructional groups while controlling for pre-test scores. As a result, it was found that there was statistically significant growth in the grammatical knowledge of both groups of participants but the improvement of those who attended the strategic translanguaging class was significantly higher than the improvement of those who attended English only grammar classes. The significant difference in instructional conditions was found after controlling the initial level of grammatical knowledge with the help of ANCOVA and the effect size related to instructional condition was rather large.
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