The Effects Of Translation On The Accuracy And Complexity Of Chinese EFL Learners’ Written Output

Due to its limitations,the traditional Grammar Translation Method was once widely rejected and teachers often“avoid translation as much as possible”in their teaching.Although,with the deepening understanding of L2 acquisition and the role of translation in foreign language learning,translation as a learning tool has been revived recently,its language learning potential has only been explored theoretically so far and empirical studies on“translating to learn”,especially on cooperative translation,are still rather scarce.In view of this,the present study,through a“pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-delayed posttest”experiment,supplemented by think-aloud protocols and learning journals,attempts to investigate the effects of translation on the accuracy and complexity of Chinese EFL learners’written output.The questions to address in this paper are as follows:1)Does translation have greater effects on the accuracy and complexity of Chinese EFL learners’written output than reading?2)Does collaborative translation have an advantage over individual translation in facilitating the learners’second language development?3)What are the learners’perceptions of the use of translation in second language classrooms?Sixty-six English major freshmen from a university of Jiangsu Province participated in this study.One week before the experiment,the subjects were asked to take a writing test,by which their English proficiency was assessed,and then were divided into two groups,namely the Reading Group（n=33）and the Translation Group（n=33）.Results of the Independent Sample T test showed that there was no significant difference in English proficiency between the two groups.The Translation Group was further divided into the Individual Translation Group（n=17）and the Collaborative Translation Group（n=16）.Furthermore,the subjects in the Collaborative Translation Group were paired at random,hence 8 pairs in it.In the first week of the experiment,the pretest was conducted with a writing test to measure the accuracy and complexity of the subjects’written output.From the 2^ndto the 9^thweek,tasks of reading,individual translation and collaborative translation were assigned to the three groups respectively.Besides,a part of the subjects in the Translation Group were selected to participate in the think-aloud protocol experiment in the 2^ndweek,the 5^thweek and the 9^thweek respectively.The immediate posttest and the delayed posttest were carried out with a writing task in the 10^thweek and the 14^thweek accordingly.After the experiment,the subjects in the Translation Group were asked to write a reading journal.The results showed that,after the 8-week intervention,the accuracy of the Reading Group improved significantly,but not its complexity,while the accuracy and complexity of the Translation Group both improved significantly,and were also greater than those of the Reading Group,indicating that translation may have more advantages than reading in promoting L2 development.A possible explanation could be that the subjects in the Reading Group mainly focused on meaning while those in the Translation Group paid attention to both meaning and form.Therefore,the Translation Group needed to devote more cognitive resources to translation activities compared to the reading group.Besides,the Collaborative Translation Group performed better than the Individual Translation Group in terms of accuracy and complexity,suggesting that collaborative translation may produce better effect than individual translation.One possible reason might be that translating collaboratively enables learners to provide immediate feedback with each other and share their linguistic knowledge,thus requiring them to deal with more linguistic problems.In addition,the collected learning journals demonstrated that the subjects in the Translation Group generally had a positive attitude towards translation as a learning tool and believed that translation contributed to their second language development.The present study,on the one hand,introduced translation as a form of written output into the study of second language acquisition,thus expanding the scope of the research on the language learning potential of written output,and on the other hand,by comparing the effects of reading and translation on L2 development,it proves the necessity and effectiveness of translation as a learning and teaching device in the advanced stage of foreign language learning,thereby helping to transcend the narrow understanding that translation is only a language skill and offering new ideas for optimizing foreign language teaching.