The Impact Of Professional Preparation Environment On The Professional Competence Of MTI Students

One of the main functions of higher education is to prepare graduates to serve the needs of the society.Today's society is quite different from before.Knowledge economy has made it a must for higher education institutions(HEIs)of the world to produce highly-skilled workers for economy.It is also true of HEIs of China.The focus of postgraduate education has shifted from liberal arts education to professional one.Recent years have clearly evidenced this point.Of them the development of the degree of Master of Translation and Interpreting(MTI)is particularly noteworthy.It is one of the newly-set professional degrees and has rapidly become the second largest one in student enrolment.This makes it necessary and urgent to understand more about the program.The role of environment has long been recognized as a critical factor in training talents.It not only dictates the needs of the country for talents,but considerably influences the outcome of the quality of talents.Based on the theory of professional preparation environment(PPE),taking professional competence as the indicator of the quality,the study examined the current state of MTI students' professional competence,and explores its relationship with the PPE and the mediating variables existing between them.The particular research questions are:what the status quo of the PPE of MTI students is like,and what the present state of the professional competence of MTI students is like,how the professional competence of MTI students is affected by the PPE they are in and how to enhance their professional competence.The research adopted the paradigm of empiricism-positivism and used questionnaire as instrument to measure,and MTI students were also interviewed to deepen the understanding and testify the empirical findings.The questionnaire mainly consists of four scales.The first one is a self-designed 16-item scale to collect the perception of the PPE of MTI students.The second and the third ones are borrowed from previous researches and used to investigate MTI students' professional commitment and learning engagement respectively.The last one is the other self-designed scale with 23 items and was used to evaluate the professional competence of MTI students.The four scales have been tested and all prove to be satisfactory in validity and reliability.The subjects of the study comes from those HEIs which have the first,the second and the third year group of MTI postgraduates by cluster sampling.Either printed questionnaires or electronic ones are sent to facilitate the completion of the questionnaire.844 questionnaires were distributed and of them 602 ones were returned and analyzed.A series of methods of SPSS like item analysis,exploratory factor analysis,independent t test,ANOVA,multiple regression,and structural equation modelling were used to analyze the data.The main findings are listed below:(1)Professional Preparation Environment Scale is composed of three factors,namely the factor of teaching,university and society,and its general condition is a little above the average.The factor of society is below the average level and worse than that of the other two factors.There are no statistically significant differences as to the perception of the PPE in gender,year of program,first degree,state of employment,internship of real professional work,nature of university,region,certificate of translation,English proficiency,and degree of familiarity of the profession.Statistically significant differences do exist in varibles like the university of first degree,year,and the degree of satisfaction of learning experience.(2)Professional Competence Scale is composed of four factors,which are professional knowledge,key skills,related skills and professional ethnics.Its general condition is a little above the average,and the level of the acquisition of professional knowledge is much lower than that of the other three factors.There are no statistically significant differences as to the self-evaluation of the professional competence in gender,year of program,major of first degree,state of employment,nature of university,location of university,university of first degree,English proficiency.Statistically significant differences can be found in certificate of translation,internship of real professional work,year,familiarity of the profession and the degree of satisfaction of learning experience.(3)The direct effect that PPE has on professional competence is 0.20 while the indirect effect that it has on professional competence via the meditors of professional commitment and learning engagement is 0.20 and 0.07 respectively.It shows that the ratio between indirect effect and total effect is 57.4%and can draw the conclusion that PPE itself alone does not play a decisive role in MTI students' acquisition of professional competence.(4)The standardized regression equation for the professional competence of MTI students is:professional competence=0.244×dedication+0.166×teaching environment? 0.142×vigor +0.111×continuance committment +0.092×normative commitment.The results of the test of hypothesis reveal that ?the PPE of MTI students has direct positive effect on their professional competence,professional commitment and learning engagemen respectively;?the professional commitment of MTI students has direct positive effect on their professional competence and on their learning engagement;?the learning engagement of MTI students has direct positive effect on their professional competence;?the variables of professional commitment and learning engagement play a partial mediating role between PPE and professional competence.The subsequent interviews of MTI students and recent graduates further testify the empirical findings.As to the finding that the condition of social environment is not favorable in preparing MTI students,it is suggested that legislation is the way to guarantee the right of using translation service and the provision of professional service,and thus will raise the social status and income of the profession,and the degree of employer engagement.To deal with the finding that the amount of professional knowledge acquired by MTI students is not sufficient for professional work,more emphasis should be put on the professional development of full-time MTI teachers and the accreditation of the part-time teachers recruited from the industry of translation.In addition,the improvement of the continuance commitment MTI students should also be stressed while attaching more importance in selecting right candidates for MTI program and institutionalizing the success of the certification of MTI students as a benchmark for graduation.