The Application Of Grammar-Translation Method And Communicative Approach To College English Translation Teaching

With the intensification of globalization and China's entry into WTO, the exchange between China and foreign countries has become increasingly wider and deeper than ever before, ranging from all aspects such as economy, business, culture, technology, etc. As a tool of international communication, translation definitely plays a significant role in facilitating the communication with other countries. As a result, our society is in urgent need of a large quantity of translation talents.At present, universities and colleges shoulder the major responsibility of cultivating and training translation talents for China's modernization construction. However, translation teaching has long been confined to English majors in colleges of foreign languages. Although English majors have laid a solid linguistic foundation and possessed strong language competence, they may still feel frustrated and helpless when translating professional materials about business, economy, science, technology, medicine, chemistry, biology and so on because their professional knowledge of those disciplines is relatively narrow and limited. Social need for qualified translators is not met only by English majors.Meanwhile, as for non-English majors, translation competence is also of great significance for their further study and future work, and even they may become the main force of translation talents. However, in limited college English translation teaching, spoon-feeding education prevails and teachers usually adopt traditional Grammar-Translation Method with the purpose of consolidating learners'language knowledge, which is conductive to improving their language and translation competence to some degree. But it lacks the practice of using language and is not helpful to cultivate students'communicative competence. Guided by this method, learners usually lack interest and initiative of learning translation, which leads to their poor translation competence. This traditional teaching method can not fully meet the requirements of the new situation and actual translation work. Therefore, it is very urgent to improve the teaching method used in college English translation teaching.Communicative Approach (CA) is a new language teaching method that is very popular nowadays. CA is learner-centered and regards the cultivation of communicative competence as the core of foreign language teaching, adhering to the teaching principles of using language and authenticity, etc. It can guide any language skills acquisition, including English listening, speaking, reading, writing, translating, etc. In this research, the author applies CA to college English translation teaching in order to improve GTM and emphasize the communicativeness, process-orientedness and effectiveness of translation practice. However, it is insufficient to adopt CA exclusively in translation teaching in China because it lacks some necessary conditions, such as cultural circumstance, language situation, qualified translation teachers, etc. Therefore, it is very necessary to integrate GTM and CA in college English translation teaching in order to improve non-English majors'translation competence.Before the research, the author investigates the current situation of college English translation teaching in vocational colleges and focuses on making a detailed comparison of GTM and CA. On this basis, the author comes up with a translation teaching method integrating GTM with CA. Then the author applies this translation teaching model to college English translation teaching in order to develop the current situation of translation teaching and improve non-English majors'translation competence.In order to check out the feasibility and validity of the experimental teaching method in college English translation teaching, the author makes a quasi-experiment in college English translation classes for about 16 weeks. The participants in the experimental study are 80 freshmen majoring in International Trade from two natural classes of Jinan Railway Technical and Vocational College. Since the two natural classes all consists of 40 members, the author randomly chooses one as the experiment class and the other as the control class. Besides, two different teaching methods are employed in the course of the experiment. The author adopts the experimental teaching method to teach the experimental class and the traditional method to teach the controlled class. The instruments utilized in this study include the pre-test, the post-test, one questionnaire (used both before the experiment and after the experiment) and an interview. On the basis of the empirical study, the thesis mainly solves the following problems: (1) Whether the integrated teaching method can enhance students'translation interest and initiative of learning translation or not; (2) Whether the integrated teaching method can improve students'translation competence greatly or not.After the teaching experiment, the author processes the experimental data by means of SPSS and makes a detailed analysis of the results. According to the analysis, the integrated teaching method is confirmed to be feasible and effective in college English translation teaching. It not only helps to enhance students'interest in translation but also makes a great contribution to the improvement of their translation competence. In the end, the author points out the limitations of the research and puts forward some suggestions on the further research.