A Study On The CBI-based Engineering English Translation Teaching

With the implementation and advancement of the “ One Belt,One Road ”initiative,a large number of infrastructure construction and industrial investment projects have been going abroad.Our nation is in urgent need of a large number of foreign language inter-disciplinary talents engaged in engineering literature translation,contract translation,technical specification and industry standard translation,engineering culture dissemination and other aspects,which means that English majors not only need to be proficient in English,but also need to master the basic knowledge of engineering disciplines,thus indicating that teachers’ translation teaching concepts and methods should be changed accordingly.This thesis takes the teacher of the translation courses and 158 junior English majors in a university in Chongqing as the research objects,using questionnaire,interview,pre-test and post-test as research instruments,and adopting qualitative and quantitative research methods to explore the cognition of the translation course teachers and students on the content-based instruction(CBI)in the teaching of engineering English translation,as well as the students’ learning interests and effects.On this basis,the thesis intends to answer the following four questions:(1)How does the teacher recognize the role of CBI in engineering English translation teaching?(2)What is the cognitive attitude of students towards the CBI in engineering English translation teaching?(3)Can the implementation of CBI in translation teaching improve students’ interest in learning?(4)Has the students’ engineering English translation competence improved by adopting CBI?Based on the data analysis from questionnaires,interviews,pre-test and post-test,the author found that:(1)The teacher believes that the implementation of CBI in the teaching of engineering English translation is a challenge to both teachers and students in view of interdisciplinary professional knowledge involved.However,with engineering literature as the carrier,implementing CBI in translation teaching can not only cultivate students’ translation ability,but also help students acquire interdisciplinary knowledge,thus realizing the teaching goal of promoting both subject knowledge ability and English language competence.(2)The majority of students hold that CBI on the basis of subject knowledge can enrich students’ knowledge and greatly enhance their learning interests.However,due to the differences in academic background,it is difficult to understand some professional knowledge.(3)For the third and fourth research questions,despite of the challenges from the interdisciplinary materials in translation teaching and learning,on the whole,both the teacher and students hold positive attitudes towards the teaching method.Considering the problems found in the research,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: In the process of translation teaching,teachers should comprehensively use CBI-based teaching models,such as theme-based language instruction,adjunct language instruction,sheltered content instruction,select teaching materials reasonably,and control the difficulty of materials properly so as to meet the demands of most students as far as possible.At the same time,students should endeavor to learn interdisciplinary knowledge and enrich their knowledge in order to prepare them better to adapt to CBI.