Google Translate search strategies used by learners of Spanish L3: A complex lexico-morpho-syntactic weave of trial and error

Abstract

This article presents a study on Google Translate search strategies among 16 Swedish senior high school students (age 17–18) engaging in writing tasks during their sixth year studying Spanish L3. The students wrote on laptops with Internet access and were allowed to use Google Translate to search for Spanish words. Analyses of approximately 43 hours of screen recordings covering the writing of 57 essays reveal a complex weave of Google Translate search strategies performed in Swedish, English, and Spanish. The strategies combine lexical and morphosyntactic searches, ranging from single words to longer sequences of words. The searches were frequently characterised by trial-and-error-based approaches that comprised numerous control translations of already known words. The observations also reveal search behaviors interpreted as lack of trust among the students in the search results and in their own language skills.