A Study Of Recitation In The Reduction Of Negative Transfer Of Mother Tongue In Chinese-english Translation

As a way of language output, Chinese-English translation involves the information shiftfrom Chinese to English and is inevitably affected by the negative transfer of Chinese.Vocational students are doing poor in their Chinese-English translation and thus they are moreapt to be influenced by the negative transfer of Chinese. This is mainly due to the inadequacy ofthe students’ language input. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the students’ English input inorder to reduce the negative transfer of Chinese. As a traditional learning method, recitation isan effective language input. From the perspective of input and output theory, the study aims toapply recitation to Chinese-English translation so as to reduce the negative transfer of mothertongue and improve the translating competence of vocational students.This research instruments include empirical study and questionnaire. The whole teachingexperiment lasted for two terms and the subjects are84first year English majors in ShandongYingcai College. The two classes were randomly assigned as experimental class and controlclass and at the beginning of the experiment, the pre-questionnaire and pre-test wereadministered in the two classes. And then forty-two students of experimental class were askedto recite some materials for a certain amount under teacher’s guidance while forty-two studentsin control class were not asked to recite anything. The quality and quantity of the recitingmaterials were well-chosen by their English teacher in accordance with best input and at thesame time, their English teacher provides them with reciting guidance accordingly. Aftertwo-term recitation experiment, the post-test and post-questionnaire were also carried outamong the subjects.Finally, data was collected including the translating test results and questionnaire results ofexperimental class and control class before and after the experiment. Through the analysis ofthe data collected from pre-test, pre-questionnaire, post-test and post-questionnaire, students inthe experimental class make much progress in Chinese-English translation and the negativetransfer errors are reduced a lot through recitation.The results of translation tests and questionnaires suggest that the application of recitationcan reduce the negative transfer of mother tongue in English majors’ Chinese-Englishtranslation in vocational schools. The thesis at last points out the limitations, the implications ofthe study and suggestions for future studies.