ABSTRACT
Despite the widespread popular assumption that translation should play a major and neces sary part in the study of a foreign language, twentieth-century theories of language teach ing and learning have at best ignored the role of translation, and at worst vilified it. From the tum of the century onwards almost all influen tial theoretical works on language teaching have assumed without argument that a new language (L2) should be taught without refer ence to the student's first language (Ll) .
