The role of metacognition in enhancing students' comptence in translation

Abstract

"This piece of research is an attempt to investigate the relationship between metacognitive knowledge of third year translation students in the university of Constantine-1- and their translation competence. The investigation, thus, is based on the main hypothesis that metacognitive knowledge is likely to exist on a par with a good performance in translation. In other words, students who are able to evaluate their aptitudes and competencies and to tell about the strategies they know or use and the factors pertaining to the development and acquisition of their translation skill are more liable to perform well in translation or are likely to be among the category of good achievers. To verify the plausibility of the advanced hypotheses, two questionnaires and a translation test are administered. The first questionnaire is undertaken before to the translation test, and the second one after completing one’s translation. Although this research is meant to show the effect metacognition has on students’ performance, it still insists on revising the way translation teaching is undertaken and stressing the importance of making students aware of the learning enterprise and of giving them the chance to self-monitor their own process of acquiring translation skill.