Semantic Mapping in Teaching Translation

Semantic mapping is a technique developed by Johnson and Pearson (1978). Concept maps are graphical representations of knowledge. They tried to help us in finding the relationship between words by creating a visual map of the connections They are composed of concepts enclosed in circles or boxes and connecting lines indicating the relationships between concepts or propositions. By studying semantic mapping and word connections we can enhance translation ability of students. Translations across languages would be followed by the direct access of semantic meaning from the L2 word. Bloem and Heij (2001) said that one of the empirical enigmas in experimental psychology is that the presence of a semantic relation between a target stimulus and a context has a positive effect on performance in some paradigms but a clear negative effect in others.A semantic map can also be explained as a graphic arrangement of words and it shows how new words and ideas are related to each other within a text.In this book we intend to create a new method to teach translation through semantic maps.