Chunk Teaching In CET And Its Influence On Translation Competence

The research on chunks has attracted much attention in recent years. Corpus linguistics has found that there are more semi-prefabricated or prefabricated chunks than isolated words in native speakers’speech. Chunks are varied from single word to multiword and the integrity of the meaning of chunks can assist students with memorizing the words and improving listening, speaking, reading and writing (Chen Siying,2006; Li Ou, Sun Ruohong,2009; Yanghong, Wang Chengxi,2010).The influences of chunks on listening, speaking, reading and writing have attracted much attention. The influence of chunks on translation competence, however, is seldom researched by scholars. The concept of translation competence has long been discussed, but no consensus made. Due to the limited time and conditions, the translation competence in this thesis is clarified as comprehension from English to Chinese and expression from Chinese to English.The main research question is teaching chunks in CET and its influence on translation comprehension and expression, whether chunks can make understanding more correctly in translation from English to Chinese, and can make the translation from Chinese to English more colloquial and fluent. The teaching material is "College English". The participants are freshmen majoring in environmental art design from Wuhan Bioengineering College. The experiment lasts14weeks.76students from two classes are pre-tested and there is no significant difference between the two groups’ translation competence. At the end of the experiment, there is a posttest and SPSS.17.0is employed to analyze the data.After the experiment, two major findings are drawn by the statistical analysis,(1) chunk teaching is effective on improving translation competence. Chunk teaching helps reducing the number of lexical errors and grammatical errors that appeared in translation from C to E to some extent; and helps increasing the language production in translation from E to C by reducing errors resulted from the nonunderstanding and misunderstanding errors;(2) Compared with non-English majors, art major students should use a different, comparatively easier course book. College English is used by all non-English majors in Wuhan Bioengineering College. During the experiment, it is found that the reading material in the course book is very demanding for art majors.The thesis is composed by three parts. The first part is the abstract in Chinese and English. The second part is the body of the thesis. The last part is the bibliography and the appendixes. Body part consists of five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction of the thesis. It introduces the background, significance and goal of the thesis. The second chapter is the literature review. It reviews the researches of chunks abroad and at home and clarifies the concept of translation competence and presents the theoretical framework of the thesis. The third chapter is the research method and the detailed experiment steps. The fourth chapter is the discussion of results. The analysis of data will be presented. The last chapter is the conclusion which discusses the findings from the teaching experiment, points out the limitations of the thesis and provides some suggestions for further research.