Chapter One Introduction
1.1 The importance and effects of translation in senior high school
With the development of global economy, English has gained significance in China sinceit is the second language taught and learned universally at all school levels. Accordingly,Chinese English teaching has been improved steadily since 1970s, and a new trend has beenexplored gradually. The trend has made Chinese English teaching a unique truth, whichenhances the communication between China and the International world. This ability-orientedexams focus more on developing the students’ language knowledge, skills, moral abilities,learning strategies and ideology to promote the students’ developments in an around way.However, in the senior high school the translation skills have been ignored. The translationcan strengthen the students’ reading abilities. Even some students who have relatively higherlanguage skills can’t get the high marks. Therefore, it is crucial to solve the problem.As we all know, reading plays an important role for students in the senior high schools.But unfortunately, many of the students are not good at reading comprehension. Language isthe fruit of the human civilization. Each country has its own language characteristics. It is alsothe embodiment of the human thinking. Where people exist, the communications betweendifferent languages exist. To communicate, we need to translate and understand the languagesfrom different countries. Abilities are complex concepts and translation is an activity withspecial aims of improving the students’ comprehensive abilities. Using the translation onreading is supposed to be an effective way to enhance reading comprehension, basic ability oflanguage learning.
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1.2 The general situation of translation teaching in senior high schools
For a long period of time, we have been neglecting teaching translating skills to students.However, translation theories and practices play a very important role in learning English. Weshould correct this situation of prejudice in every necessary aspect. Being able to speak alanguage is not related to how smart you are. Anyone can learn how to speak any language.This is a proven fact by everyone in the world. Everyone can speak at least one language.Whether you are intelligent, or lacking some brain power, you are able to speak one language.The students in senior high school have already grasped some grammars and vocabularies.Translation is a kind of skill, and a discipline. It is a crucial part of teaching in seniorhigh school. But many students don’t have the translation skills and methods. They have toonly translate the sentences word by word. Sometimes the students can’t know the truemeaning of the passage’s writer, thus the wrong translation leads to the lower scores on thereading. Students don’t know how to make the right choices in the given situation.Translation is the cross-culture communication. It is also a good way to transfer thelanguage. Before the students cultivate English thinking, they need the transfer from theforeign language to Chinese. Using English translation to improve the students’ readingabilities is crucial. Teachers seldom have the time to train the students’ language translationability. The reason is easy to find, for our exams don’t ask students to focus on it.The importance of translation in the senior high school has been ignored due to a list ofreasons. Firstly，the teachers and students pay little attention to the comprehensive languageability, especially to the listening and oral English ability, and compositions. Teachers focuson the pure exams, and they seldom train the students’ translation ability. Although thestudents’ scores can be improved, their language ability can’t be solved. The translationability is a higher standard of language. It also plays an important role in the languageteaching especially to the senior high schools.
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Chapter Two Literature Reviews
2.1 Theory of constructivism
As a philosophy of learning, constructivism can be traced to the eighteenth century andthe work of the philosopher Giambattista Vico, who maintained that humans can understandonly what they have themselves constructed. A great many philosophers and educationalistshave worked with these ideas, but the first major contemporaries to develop a clear idea ofwhat constructivism consists in were Jean Piaget and John Dewey, to name but a few. Part ofthe discussion that ensues grapples with the major tenets of their philosophies, with a view toshedding light on constructivism and its vital contribution to learning.As a revealing gloss on this issue, it could be said that constructivism takes aninterdisciplinary perspective, in as much as it draws upon a diversity of psychological,sociological, philosophical, and critical educational theories. In view of this, constructivism isan overarching theory that does not intend to demolish but to reconstruct past and presentteaching and learning theories, its concern lying in shedding light on the learner as animportant agent in the learning process, rather than in wresting the power from the teacher. Ifa student is able to perform in a problem solving situation, a meaningful learning should thenoccur because he has constructed an interpretation of how things work using pre-existingstructures. This is the theory behind Constructivism. By creating a personal interpretation ofexternal ideas and experiences, constructivism allows students the ability to understand howideas can relate to each other and pre-existing knowledge
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2.2 Translation and its principles
A translation should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work. Thestyle and manner of writing should be of the same character as that of the original. Atranslation should have all the ease of the original composition (A.F. Tytler: Essay on thePrinciples of Translation). Alexnder F. Tytler, a famous British translation theorist, putforward the classical criteria in his essay on the Principles of Translation. Eugene A. Nida, afamous American translation theorist, put forward his recent interpretation of functionalequivalence in his Language and Culture: Context in Translation (2011:87). A minimal,realistic definition of functional equivalence: The readers of a translated text should be able tocomprehend it to the point that they can conceive of how the original readers of the text musthave understand and appreciate it.
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Chapter Three Methodology .... 18
3.1 Research questions ..... 18
3.2 Research instruments........ 20
3.3 Participants ..... 20
3.4 Procedures of the research...... 21
Chapter Four Results and Discussions ....... 24
4.1 Results of questionnaire analysis........ 24
4.2 Results of pre-test and post-test.... 25
4.3 Analysis of two passages for translation exercise ...... 26
4.4 Discussion ...... 33
Chapter Five Conclusion.... 34
5.1 Major findings of the study .... 34
5.2 Implications for future study ........ 34
5.3 Limitations of the study.... 36
Chapter Four Results and Discussions
4.1 Results of questionnaire analysis
Above are results of the analysis of the questionnaire (See Appendix). The title of thequestionnaire is the “Impact of Translation on Students’ Reading Comprehension Abilities inthe Senior High School”. There are 11 questions in the questionnaire. Table 4.1 concludes thestudents’ choices of the questionnaire. In the senior high school, the students don’t have theclass mainly on translation. The questionnaire shows that the students can accept the idea tocombine reading with translation.From the questionnaire, we can conclude that the students’ reading scores are various.The difference of the language competence among students is large.On the questionnaire, we see that the top scores on reading are few. In the secondquestion, the students’ interest on reading is not very high. Only 30 percent students have thehigh interest on English in the Experimental Class, but only 6 percent students like Englishreading especially in the Control Class. In the third question, most students from both classeschoose B: The biggest troubles they had during the reading process is that they don’t knowhow to translate. In the forth question, the question is that “Have you ever tried to do thetranslation when you read the passages?” Almost 30 percent of the students from theExperimental Class choose A. And 10 percent students choose A.
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Conclusion
The results of this study have revealed that using the translation teaching to enhance thestudents’ reading ability has become both meaningful and effective. In the senior high school,reading is the most important. And the students’ vocabularies and grammar have alreadyreached a relatively high level. In the end, we make a conclusion about our findings asfollows:Firstly, students’ confidence and scores can be improved be improved by translation.Translation is a skill, and a discipline. Through the half year’s study, the students’comprehensive abilities have been boosted, which shows the students’ learning potential isgreat. It is also clear that the effective reading learning strategies need to be explored.Secondly, teachers can improve students’ learning interest and initiatives by cultivatingtheir translation ability. Many students have no interest to study. Some of them don’t like thereading passages, because the students can’t grasp the words or phrases of the passage. So itwill be impossible for the students to translate the sentence correctly. This will directly lead tothe low scores on marks. Then to improve students’ learning interest and initiatives bycultivating their translation ability is a reasonable way for us to try.
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Reference (omitted)