Effects Of Task Complexity And Second Language Proficiency On The Production Of Translation Skills

Task-based language teaching emphasizes student-centered,takes tasks as motivation,actions,and goals,and fully considers students’ subjectivity in learning.Because task-based language teaching plays an important role in English teaching and tasks as the core part of this method,the effect of tasks with different degrees of complexity on learners’ second language performance has become a research focus in recent years.Most research on task complexity is conducted to investigate language performance of learners when completing different tasks based on Skehan’s Limited Attention Capacity Model and Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis Model.At present,most research at home and abroad is based on writing or speaking,while there are few studies on the production of translation skills.Most previous studies have taken the complexity,fluency and accuracy of the language output as the evaluation criteria of language performance.The current study selects two translation tasks with different degrees of complexity based on the variable “+/-prior knowledge” along the resource-dispersing dimension.It takes the production of translation skills as a method to analyze learners’ translation performance.The current study aims to answer two questions: 1)How does task complexity affect the production quantity and production types of translation skills? 2)How does second language proficiency affect the production quantity and production types of translation skills?The research subjects were 152 non-English major undergraduates with different second language proficiency from a university in Hebei Province.All the subjects were required to complete two tasks with different degrees of complexity: the simple and complex translation tasks.After collecting the translated texts and labeling the translation skills,the author used SPSS for statistical analysis.The results showed that: 1)By controlling “+/-prior knowledge” to enhance task complexity,learners’ production of translation skills was increased significantly,which was not only reflected in quantity but also type;2)The production of each translation skill also showed great differences in different tasks: compared with the complex task,addition and deletion and trans-voice translation were used more in the simple task;while compared with the simple task,negative-positive shifting,word class shifting,concrete or abstract,word splitting or combination,sentence splitting or combination,transform translation and contracting were used more in the complex task;3)Learners’ second language proficiency could not affect the production quantity and types of translation skills whether in the simple task or the complex task.The results suggest that: 1)Translation tasks with high complexity can not only inspire students to use more translation skills but also train learners to use more complex translation skills;2)The learners with higher second language proficiency pay attention to the accuracy of translation and adopt avoidance strategies for uncertain skills;3)learners with lower second language proficiency tend to use translation skills to improve translation quality.Overall,the results confirm Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis Model,that is,learners can utilize multiple attention resources,and increasing task complexity can improve learners’ performance.The current study broadens the research field of “task complexity”.It verifies the effects of translation tasks with different degrees of complexity and learner’s second language proficiency on the production of translation skills,which also provides a feasible method for the design of translation tasks.However,the current research only controls one variable “+/-prior knowledge”.Other variables can be further investigated in future research.