Kimberly Skjelde - PhD Candidate, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway

What do Norwegian EFL learners do?

The study I will present examined how first-year students taking a college preparatory English course chose to translate cognates present in academic vocabulary in English. A group of 151 first-year upper secondary students completed a 60-item translation task. The research was conducted in classroom settings in the Western regions of Norway.

Student translations were analyzed by the extent of cognate, non-cognate, or blank responses. Cognate translations were further analyzed for spelling and word-class correctness. On average, participants used cognate forms to translate a majority of the target words and were mostly able to use them correctly.  However, there was substantial variation within the participant group and significant differences between strict and lenient scores.