Journal of English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics ISSN: 2707-756X DOI: 10.32996/jeltal Journal Homepage: www.al-kindipublisher.com/index.php/jeltal JELTAL AL-KINDI CENTER FOR RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Copyright: © 2022 the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Published by Al-Kindi Centre for Research and Development, London, United Kingdom. Page | 48 | RESEARCH ARTICLE Communicative Language Teaching Impact on Students’ Cognition and Writing Motivation in Translation Practice Roswani Siregar 1 ✉ Ahmad Laut Hasibuan 2 , Efendi Barus 3 and Milisi Sembiring 4 1 Management Department, Economics Faculty, Universitas Al-Azhar, Medan, Indonesia 2 English Department, Faculty of Literature, Universitas Muslim Nusantara Al-Washliyah, Medan, Indonesia 3 English Literature Department, Faculty of Literature, Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia 4 English Department, Faculty of Literature, Universitas Methodist Indonesia, Medan, Indonesia Corresponding Author: Roswani Siregar, E-mail: roses_air@yahoo.com | ABSTRACT Language teaching aims to develop communication competence that results in interaction. From the higher education perspective, students are not merely expected to be competent in their particular disciplines but also capable of interacting with people in global cultures. Thus, the teacher should take into consideration the essentials of EFL teaching methods. For this purpose, this study investigates the students’ cognitive involvement and motivation in translation activities as part of language learning. The sample group consisted of 62 (control group = 30; experiment group = 32) students from the engineering and economics departments of two universities in North Sumatra, Indonesia. We designed the materials for translation tasks using Indonesian as the source language (L1) to be translated into English (L2). We distributed a questionnaire consisting of 15 items after the completion of each translation task session. The questionnaire items were developed to investigate cognitive involvement and motivation and were categorized into four factors. We analyzed, summarised, and compared student responses on each item. The findings reveal that cognition involvement and writing motivation improved with the application of communicative language teaching in translation classes. | KEYWORDS Communicative, language, teaching, translation, cognition, writing, motivation | ARTICLE INFORMATION ACCEPTED: 01 April 2023 PUBLISHED: 08 April 2023 DOI: 10.32996/jeltal.2023.5.2.6 1. Introduction Translation is not merely the transferring of words from the source language to the target language. It is a complex activity that involves choosing words, solving cultural terms, and preparing the whole text in a target language that is ready for the target language users. Aside from being an act of communication, translation is a complex, naturally-occurring activity that involves cultural and cognitive processes (Leonardi, 2011) and cannot be explained solely through reference to the linguistic structure (Séguinot, 2002). Thus, the field of linguistic cognition, especially in translation, has drawn the attention of scholars and practitioners in translation in recent decades. Many studies since the 1960s have reported that translation as a bilingual approach to language learning, especially in EFL, highlights the cognitive process in second language acquisition (Lambert, 1990). Further investigation to understand and explain the mental process of the translator in handling the translation has set a basis for our further research in teaching. (Risku, 2014) suggests the sociocognitive interaction as an approach to translation.