An Experiment Study On Experiencing Translation In College English Teaching Based On Constructivism

College English teaching reform is in full swing nowadays, because quality college English teachinghas remained a mission not completed yet. College students, especially those in western areas in China, cannot learn English efficiently with low language output capacity and poor English learning motivation. Inview of this awkward situation, the present study looks at problems in this respect and attempts to providesolutions. Based on the project “An Experiment Study on Experiencing Translation in College EnglishTeaching Based on CALL” directed by the author’s supervisor, the author implemented the research.In this study, we look at the mechanisms of a new teaching method—“Experiencing translation”.Experiential learning emphasizes “learning by doing” and the active involvement of the learner. Intellectualgrowth occurs when learners engage in and reflect on sequences of tasks. The author applies “Learning bydoing” and “Scaffolding instruction” theory from Constructivism into the “Experiencing translation” class.“Learning by doing” emphasizes the importance of “doing”, for knowledge can be constructed in theprocess of translation practice and peer exchange reading and revision by students’ authentic experiencing.“Scaffolding instruction” can put up scaffolding for students, such as “Theme experiencing”,“Contextexperiencing”, apprenticeship and CALL, etc., so as to help them become more effective in theconstruction of new knowledge. Accordingly, the “Experiencing translation” class is computer-assisted andprocess-oriented. The research aims to explore effective methods for developing students’ translationcompetence and other competence in English through the “Experiencing translation” teaching.The experiment, which lasted for two semesters (from February in2011to January in2012), wasperformed in North West Normal University with four experimental classes involved. Four teachers gavethe “Experiencing translation” class every other week at the Autonomous Learning Center respectively,while the students in the control classes learned English at the same place with equal time.The research is a combination of qualitative method and quantitative method, such as questionnaires,tests, students’ self-reflection, which will improve the reliability and validity of the study. The authorconcludes from the data analysis that the “Experiencing translation” is effective for improving students’translation competence, reading ability, writing ability and speaking ability except listening ability. The“Experiencing translation” teaching can solve the problem of the students’ low language productioncapacity in the western areas through the new translation teaching theory and philosophy. Thus, it is apotential and positive selection to the quality translation teaching pursued by Chinese universities. There are seven parts in this paper. The author first introduces the research background in relation tothe reformative movement currently taking place in the field of college English teaching in China. Theauthor then takes a “problematizing” perspective to exam difficulties and issues widely existing intranslation classroom. The theoretical discussion of constructivism is given in the third part. In thefollowing two parts, the author introduces this new teaching model and the teaching experiment applied inNorth West Normal University. The efficiency of this method is examined in the sixth part by analyzing theresults from the experiment. The author reports the major findings of the research, and then lists limitationsand suggestions.