A Study of the Pedagogical Effectiveness of Teaching Chinese-to-English Translation Skills at a Cram School

• Main Authors: Yen-hung Chen, 陳衍宏
• Other Authors: Chung-ling, Shih
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/51203441492692201382

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系口筆譯碩士班 === 101 === It seems inevitable for junior/senior high students to take various kinds of Chinese-English translation tests in Taiwan. However, instructors at schools or cram schools seldom teach translation skills. It sounds illogical to ask students to take translation tests without teaching them how to do translation. Thus, this research investigated the pedagogical effectiveness of teaching translation skills to junior/senior high students at a cram school. Seventeen students, aged 13 to 18, participated in this experimental teaching program at a cram school. The teaching was conducted in eight-hour classes, one hour for each. Three translation skills, including conversion, passive voice, and joint sentences, were introduced to the target students drawing on Nida’s dynamic equivalence and linguistic contrastive analysis as the theoretical framework. Each class involved the discussion of students’ translation assignments and the analysis of an article. The three skills were emphasized in the lectures and the translation discussions in class. Five after-class tests were given to the participants so as to analyze the progress they made in the process of applying the learnt translation skills. Students’ application of the three translation skills showed a progressive increase in the Post-class tests, compared with that in the Pre-class test. The occurrences of the use of the translation skills rose from 61 to 176. In terms of the use of the conversion skill, the most common one is the conversion from Chinese verbs into English nouns or others (313 occurrences). In terms of the use of passive voice, the fully-covert passive is most often utilized (59 occurrences). In terms of the use of the joint sentences, some connecting devices are used to integrate related Chinese sentences into one English sentence. Overall, the teaching of translation skills has proven to be effective. In light of the pedagogical effectiveness, teaching specific translation skills is worth an application to formal school English teaching so as to help students improve their translation skills.