Back Translation of Literary Texts and Its Effectiveness in Developing Creative Writing Skills and Academic Self-Efficacy among English Department First-level Students

Abstract

Varied strategies are proposed for the development of creative writing skills and academic self-efficacy among EFL students. Translation use, although pedagogically effective and educationally desirable, has been frequently ignored. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a proposed unit based on the back translation strategy to develop creative writing skills and academic self-efficacy among English Department first-level students at Port Said Faculty of Education. (43) participants contributed to this experimental study of one-group design, conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2018/2019. A proposed unit based on the back translation strategy was designed to train the participating sample on translating multiple literary texts such as poems, short stories and songs. Additionally, a test on participants’ creative writing skills as well as a scale on participants academic self-efficacy, both prepared by the researcher, were used as instruments to collect data. Later, sets of data were statistically analyzed using different statistical techniques. The results of the analyses revealed that the proposed unit based on the back translation helped to develop creative writing skills and academic self-efficacy among English Department first-level students. Implications, suggestions for further research, and recommendations for curricula and policy makers are included.

Keywords

• efl students
• creative writing
• back translation strategy
• academic self-efficacy