The Effects of Language Proficiency and Online Translator Training on Second Language Writing Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency, and Lexical Complexity

Abstract

Language classes have adopted technology to aid L2 learning for the last 30 years. One important technological adoption by L2 teachers is Google Translate (GT). While L2 scholars have demonstrated a positive effect of GT on L2 learners’ writing, there are a few unexplored areas. For instance, previous studies have used holistic measures to assess writing, leaving an area open as to how the use of GT affects the complexity, accuracy, fluency, and lexical complexity (CAFL). Similarly, research scholars believe that when teachers provide training and apprise the learners of the limitations of using online translators (OTs), learners can use them more effectively. However, not much evidence is available to support this. The current study was therefore conducted to fill these gaps in the literature. Two hundred twenty-five first-semester university students were made part of the study. These students were first put into high proficiency (HP; n= 108) and low proficiency (LP; n=117) and later were divided randomly across the three groups: GT+ training, GT only, and control group. The writing was evaluated in terms of CAFL; the results demonstrated that HP learners exhibited higher syntactic and lexical complexity and fluency, while LP learners fared better on accuracy.