On The Application Of Inquiry-Based Learning To Translation Teaching From A Constructivist Perspective

For a long period of time, translation teaching for undergraduate English majors has been based on the behaviorist learning theory. Due to the influence exerted by traditional teaching ideology and the limitation of teaching time, the reception learning method is adopted in the translation instruction. Reception learning means that the content of learning is presented by teachers or teaching materials in a defined state and teachers instruct and guide students systematically in a planned way in the process of learning. This method does well in transmitting a great deal of knowledge and information in a short time; however, it does badly in inspiring students'positive thinking and exploration and tends to lead to passive acceptance and mechanical memorization. Reception learning method doesn't coordinate with the nature and process of translation in practice, which contributes to the difficulty and vapidity students experience in translation classes, and strangles students'interest and initiative to some extent.On the contrary, constructivist learning theory holds the viewpoint that classroom teaching should pay more attention to learners. Teachers should encourage students to solve problems through inquiring and investigating based on their prior knowledge and experience and gradually build new knowledge and concepts. In inquiry-based learning, instead of telling students the knowledge and strategies related to teaching objects, teachers should create a specific learning atmosphere to allow students to put forward questions based on the context, formulate hypotheses, collect many kinds of evidences as foundation to verify or falsify the hypotheses and reach the conclusion in the end, that is encourage students to discover and comprehend knowledge and techniques by themselves. Inquiry-based learning approach emphasizes the process of exploration and the cultivation of students'exploration capacity, experiment capacity, thinking capacity and reflection capacity, which meets the demands of current education reform and the social demands for diverse, all-around and high-quality translation talent. Therefore, under the guidance of constructivism theory, the author tries to put inquiry-based learning into translation teaching, deeply explore the realization problem in translation teaching and verify the feasibility and validity of applying inquiry-based learning to translation teaching through a quasi-experimental study.The experiment, which lasted 18 weeks, was performed in Shandong Xiehe Vocational and Technical College. It was divided into four stages: 1) Pre-test. At the beginning of the experiment, the author conducted pre-test to the four classes which had the author's translation lectures. The purpose was to choose two natural classes as research subjects. The pre-test paper was composed of two exercises of English-Chinese translation and one exercise of Chinese-English translation from TEM-8. Students were asked to finish the exercises within 90 minutes. The test scores suggested that Class Two and Class Three were at the same translation level. The author casually chose the former as the control class and the latter as the experimental class. 2) Teaching process. The teaching hours of the two classes were equal and the teaching materials were the same, but the control class received traditional reception learning method while the experimental class performed inquiry-based learning. 3) Post-test. Seventeen weeks later, post-test was carried out in the two classes. The question type and time of the post-test was the same as the pre-test. In order to guarantee the consistency of the difficulty between pre-test and post-test, the writer asked a few teachers for advice and identification. 4) Questionnaire and interview. Questionnaire and interview which aimed at surveying students'attitudes to these two learning methodologies, and their learning behavior and harvest after one-term's learning were conducted after the post-test.The author analyzed the quantitative and qualitative data collected from the experiment in detail. The result of the translation proficiency tests implied that the post-test score of the experimental class was superior to that of the control class and the difference was significant. Moreover, the result of questionnaire and interview suggested that different teaching methods leaded to students'different attitudes to translation learning in the two classes. More students in the experimental class were interested in translation learning and performed more actively in previewing and completing the task assigned by the teacher. Based on the above survey and research, inquiry-based learning approach turns out to be acceptable and effective in translation teaching, which paves way for the writer to formulate the specific suggestions of applying inquiry-based learning to translation teaching in order to provide reference for the future translation teaching.