An Investigation Into The Role Of Noticing Function Of Language Output In Chinese-to-English Translation Teaching And Learning

In recent years,there has been a long-existing phenomenon in the field of foreign language teaching and research that language input has been attached great importance,while language output fails to get enough attention.Krashen's Input Hypothesis is one of the most influential theories which emphasizes language input(Lu 2002).With the development of second language acquisition(SLA) research,many scholars have realized the limitations of the Input Hypothesis.Among them,Schmidt (1990,1993,1994) proposed the well-known Noticing Hypothesis,stating that language acquisition will never occur unless learners notice the gap between their interlanguage and the target language.Swain (1993,1995) also proposed the Output Hypothesis,arguing that output activities can promote noticing of problems of interlanguage,and gaps between interlanguage and the target language(TL).The present study,based on the theoretical framework of the Noticing Hypothesis and the Output Hypothesis,aims to investigate the following questions:(1) What aspect(s) of language do L2 learners tend to notice while translating a L1 passage and comparing their translation with the native-speaker model?(2) Is it more conductive to notice the hole of the interlanguage,and the gap between the interlanguage and the TL than to notice the gap alone?(3) What are learners' proficiency effects on noticing and incorporation of linguistic features?A total of 100 Ph.D.candidates participated the present study,and were assigned into the experimental group and the control group.The two groups used the same translation material,but were given different translation tasks.Data were collected through the instrument of note-taking,and analyzed with SPSS software.The following findings were generated through the result analyses:(1) The students noticed overwhelmingly lexical problems both when translating a L1 passage and comparing their translation with the native-speaker model;(2) It is more conductive to notice the hole of the interlanguage,and the gap between the interlanguage and the TL than to notice the gap alone, because the former not only facilitates producing more learner noticing in comparison task,but also promotes incorporating more of the solutions to the noticed problems;(3) The less proficient group noticed more problems than the more proficient group,and incorporated more of them accordingly,but the differences were not statistically significant.Besides,some suggestions for future research and English translation teaching and learning are also presented.