An Empirical Study On Isas Approach To Business English Translation Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

“Business English translation” is a specialized key course in higher vocational business English major.The course objectives enable the students to combine the language skills and the business knowledge,grasp the practical business English translation skills comprehensively and improve the business English translation competences.The traditional teaching model is still based on the teacher-oriented model and the students' acceptance passively,which can not effectively improve the students' interests in learning and translation competences,the teaching efficiency is not good.Meanwhile,it is not high for the business English majors' scores in participating in the CNBECT(level-2)(China National Business English Certificate Test)of the translation between English and Chinese.It becomes the research topic worthy of discussion on how to increase the students' learning enthusiasm,translation competence and translation teaching efficiency.The research makes use of the study result in translation competence models and combines the features of the higher vocational students and the market demands.It assumes that the higher vocational business English majors' translation competences compose of the following three sub-competences,namely the bilingual competence of information communication,the transfer competence engaged in the primary business English translation work and the instrumental competence of using translation tools,electronic and network resources.The research is an empirical study about the ISAS approach to the business English translation teaching based on the constructivist learning theory.It aims to verify the feasibility of the ISAS approach to higher vocational business English translation,increase the students' learning enthusiasm,enhance their translation competences and the translation teaching efficiency.The study is conducted among 60 second-year business English majors in two natural classes from a vocational college,who are divided into the control group and the experimental group for comparison.In the control group,the traditional teaching approach is applied,while the ISAS approach to business English translation centered on developing translation competence is adopted in experimental group.The ISAS approach increases the students' learning interests by the autonomous learning means of analyzing,collating,searching the business translation contents and the group cooperative learning.Its teaching procedures are information collation,analysis discussion,PowerPoint production,presentation report,group evaluation and teacher comments in order,which can deepen the students' understanding in the business English translation knowledge and enhance their translation competences.According to the comparisons between pre-and post-questionnaires,pre-and postCNBECT translation tests(Without using translation tools online)and two different teaching approaches in the two groups,which show that both of the score and the performance of experimental group is more obvious increased than they are in the pre-test and the control group.The pre-and post-questionnaires results show that the students' interests of the business translation course in the experimental group has been increased,their initiative and confidence to the course has been enhanced.The pre-and posttranslation tests results indicate that the bilingual competence in the business English professional vocabulary and technical terms and the transfer competence engaged in the primary business English translation work have been improved,their translation test scores have also been raised obviously.The result of “T-value” with the students' test scores shows the students of the experimental group have made more progress and their translation competence has been improved remarkably.Meanwhile,the author have made pre-and post-CNBECT translation tests(With using translation tools online)in order to observe the change of the students' instrumental competence.It shows the students have made progress in the instrumental competence by using all kinds of electric translation tools online.The research discovers that the ISAS approach to the business English translation is superior to the traditional translation method.It is feasible that the ISAS approach applies to the business English translation teaching.It is effective that the ISAS approach can enhance the students' translation competences.However,the time and scope of the research are limited and small.The students' individual differences are not considered in the research,which remains to be further exploration.