Beyond Grammar-Translation: Material Mediation as a Pivotal Feature of Effective Translation Pedagogy

This chapter focuses on the planning and teaching cycle of one teacher during a collaborative translation activity to explore the ways that materials shape the teaching and learning process, and we use Grammar-Translation as a point of contrast to highlight the specific affordances of translating pedagogies. Analyzing videotaped lessons, interviews, and reflective blogs, this study employs sociocultural and applied linguistic theories of materiality to examine the ways that objects in the environment shape, and are shaped by, human activity. Findings illustrate the ways that the physical relationship between actors and objects limit or give access to the semiotic fields that enable meaning to be constructed. The arrangement of student bodies, the strategic use of written and digital materials, and improvised writing conventions shaped planning and teaching phases of instruction. Finally, we offer implications for teachers and scholars interested in language learning.