This study investigates how the parallel reading of an English short story and its Kyrgyz translation can support language learning, stylistic awareness, and intercultural understanding in an English as a foreign language (EFL) higher-education setting. Situated at the intersection of linguistics and cultural studies, the study draws on linguistic analysis to examine the lexical and stylistic texture of the paired texts and on cultural analysis to interpret the values, cultural associations, and intercultural meanings that these texts convey. Although the short story is widely recognised as a productive genre for language teaching, comparatively little classroom-based evidence addresses how bilingual presentation—that is, the source text presented alongside its translation—shapes learners’ linguistic, stylistic, and affective engagement in under-researched educational contexts such as Kyrgyzstan. Adopting a qualitative, classroom-based design, the study implemented a three-stage teaching sequence (pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading) built around Cynthia Rylant’s “Papa’s Parrot” and its Kyrgyz translation “Атасынын тоту кушу” with 25 undergraduate philology students of intermediate English proficiency. Data were drawn from classroom observations, comprehension tasks, reflective journals, and a comparative stylistic analysis of paired passages, and were examined through thematic coding across three principal domains: cognitive outcomes, affective outcomes, and translation awareness. The findings indicate that comparing the English source text with its Kyrgyz rendering helped learners notice lexical and stylistic shifts, strengthened vocabulary retention through contextualised cross-linguistic associations, and deepened emotional and intercultural engagement with the text’s themes of family, memory, communication, and reconciliation. The study argues that translated short stories, when read bilingually and analysed stylistically and comparatively, can function as a pedagogically effective, culturally responsive, and linguistically meaningful resource for integrated language and literature instruction. Implications for EFL curriculum design in bilingual educational settings, classroom practice, and directions for larger mixed-methods research are also discussed.
This study investigates how the parallel reading of an English short story and its Kyrgyz translation can support language learning, stylistic awareness, and intercultural understanding in an English as a foreign language (EFL) higher-education setting. Situated at the intersection of linguistics and cultural studies, the study draws on linguistic analysis to examine the lexical and stylistic texture of the paired texts and on cultural analysis to interpret the values, cultural associations, and intercultural meanings that these texts convey. Although the short story is widely recognised as a productive genre for language teaching, comparatively little classroom-based evidence addresses how bilingual presentation—that is, the source text presented alongside its translation—shapes learners’ linguistic, stylistic, and affective engagement in under-researched educational contexts such as Kyrgyzstan. Adopting a qualitative, classroom-based design, the study implemented a three-stage teaching sequence (pre-reading, while-reading, and post-reading) built around Cynthia Rylant’s “Papa’s Parrot” and its Kyrgyz translation “Атасынын тоту кушу” with 25 undergraduate philology students of intermediate English proficiency. Data were drawn from classroom observations, comprehension tasks, reflective journals, and a comparative stylistic analysis of paired passages, and were examined through thematic coding across three principal domains: cognitive outcomes, affective outcomes, and translation awareness. The findings indicate that comparing the English source text with its Kyrgyz rendering helped learners notice lexical and stylistic shifts, strengthened vocabulary retention through contextualised cross-linguistic associations, and deepened emotional and intercultural engagement with the text’s themes of family, memory, communication, and reconciliation. The study argues that translated short stories, when read bilingually and analysed stylistically and comparatively, can function as a pedagogically effective, culturally responsive, and linguistically meaningful resource for integrated language and literature instruction. Implications for EFL curriculum design in bilingual educational settings, classroom practice, and directions for larger mixed-methods research are also discussed.
