Research on the Problems and Enhancement Strategies in Higher Vocational English Translation Teaching
Online veröffentlicht: 17. März 2025
Eingereicht: 22. Okt. 2024
Akzeptiert: 29. Jan. 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0241
Schlüsselwörter
© 2025 Wei Wu, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With the rapid development of economy and culture and the increasing international communication, the society needs more and more English applied talents, and to some extent, English skills have been put into a prominent position in English teaching. Translation, as an intricate process, is not only a communicative behavior or a cultural phenomenon [1-3]. Translation is not only a rule-following activity, but also a creative activity. Higher vocational English translation teaching for the society to cultivate talents with professional application ability, in order to comply with the development of society, higher vocational English translation teaching needs to be combined with the market requirements to implement the training of talents [4-6]. Higher vocational students must have a certain degree of basic knowledge and skills in English, and can translate general topics from English into Chinese. For a long time, translation teaching has been in a secondary position in higher vocational English teaching, and there are still many problems in English translation teaching.
Higher vocational English translation teaching is still classroom-centered and teacher-centered [7-9]. The teaching process is accustomed to be dominated by the teacher’s teaching, and students can only passively accept the knowledge, with insufficient subjective initiative, especially when most of the English translation teaching in higher vocational education refers to undergraduate English translation teaching, which is difficult to mobilize the interest of higher vocational students in higher vocational education under the special environment of higher vocational education and has a certain distance from the goal of cultivating students’ application ability in higher vocational education institutions.
Many English teachers in higher vocational colleges and universities do not pay attention to the importance of translation teaching, believing that translation is only the conversion of different languages, and that with sufficient vocabulary and grammar accumulation, translation can be achieved with the help of dictionaries, thus, there is no need to spend too much energy on systematic translation learning, and even consider translation teaching dispensable, which makes students’ English translation ability greatly discounted [10-12]. Most of the current higher vocational English translation teaching is based on sentence and paragraph translation, the process ignores the comparison of Chinese and English language and word usage, does not pay attention to the comparison of Chinese and Western cultures, and ignores the introduction of British and American cultures and linguistic habits, and the students have to translate exactly according to the literal meaning, which makes the students unaware of what they are doing [13-14]. Higher vocational English teaching objects are partly high school graduates, as well as technical schools, junior colleges and vocational high school students, the English foundation of this group of students is very weak, grammatical knowledge is very incomplete, and vocabulary is not up to the syllabus requirements. At the same time, it is difficult for senior students to concentrate in the English classroom, and their self-confidence is insufficient, so they are passively indoctrinated with knowledge, and their self-learning ability is generally not developed, and their learning effect is generally poor [15-17].
This study examines the offline higher vocational English translation course in depth and summarizes the current problems of teaching higher vocational English translation. To address the problems, we use constructivism and self-efficacy as theoretical bases and construct a model of English translation teaching strategies for higher vocational English using the Bayesian Learning Tracking (BKT) model. One hundred students from School Y were selected as the research subjects and divided into an experimental group and a control group to conduct an experiment on teaching strategies for higher vocational English translation. The pre- and post-test English translation scores and English translation self-efficacy of the two groups were analyzed to investigate the effect of the English translation teaching strategy model constructed in this paper.
In order to understand the current teaching status of translation courses, the author intervened in offline translation courses and investigated a total of six English translation teachers’ classes in a foreign language university: Business English Translation, English-Chinese Translation, Chinese-English Translation, Newspaper Selection and Translation, Film and Television Translation and Advanced English-Chinese Interpretation. The aim of conducting a 2-week teaching observation was to understand the allocation of resources, activity organization, and the status of teaching and learning of teachers and students in traditional translation teaching. According to the above classroom observation form, this study focuses on five aspects of classroom activities, namely teaching preparation, teaching activities, organization, multimedia use, and students’ speeches, to record classroom activities. The recording and statistical results of the classroom observation items are shown in Table 1. Among them, TT is the time of teacher’s lecture, ST1 is the time of student’s discussion, ST2 is the time of teacher-student interaction, AT is the number of student’s active responses, and PT is the number of student’s passive responses.
Higher vocational English translation classroom observation record
| Course name | Teaching activity | TT | ST1 | St2 | AT | PT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business English translation | Teach new course, practice and summarize and consolidate | 70min/77.8% | 5min/5.6% | 15min/16.7% | 3 | 5 |
| English-Chinese translation | Import, teach new course, practice and summarize and consolidate | 81min/90% | 3min/3,3% | 9min/10% | 3 | 18 |
| Chinese-English translation | Teach new course and summarize and consolidate | 60min/66.7% | 10min/11.1% | 20min/22.2% | 2 | 4 |
| Reading and translation of newspapers | Teach new course and practice | 78min/86.7% | 0min/0 | 12min/13.3% | 1 | 8 |
| Film translation | Teach new course and summarize and consolidate | 80min/88.9% | 0min/0 | 10min/11.1% | 1 | 2 |
| Advanced English and Chinese translation | Import and teach new course | 89min/98.9% | 0min/0 | 1min/1.1% | 0 | 1 |
Through the analysis of the observation data and model, the author found that although the teachers in traditional translation classrooms all have quite professional translation knowledge background, have a high degree of cross-cultural awareness, and are full of humanistic feelings in the teaching process, they still have the following problems in the current translation teaching process:
1) Focusing on the mid- and post-course stages, ignoring the self-study link before class In observing the teaching process of the six teachers, it is found that the teachers’ teaching mainly focuses on the mid- and post-course stages, with the teacher’s lecture as the main focus in the mid- and post-course stages, and the relevant homework assignments as the main focus in the post-course stages, but none of the teachers puts the mid- and post-course teaching content in the pre-course stage for the students to complete on-line. Taking the course of Business English Translation as an example, the teacher teaches the translation principles of Business English Translation in class and arranges for students to translate the original text and analyze and comment on it in class. It can be seen that both factual and procedural knowledge are discussed in the middle of the class, and a lot of time is spent listening to the teacher’s lectures.
2) Focusing on the introduction of language knowledge, neglecting goal orientation and contextual introduction, and lacking communicative application Among the teachers observed in the classroom, two teachers had an introduction section in the new lesson teaching session, but one of them mainly emphasized the importance of the content of the lesson. The other teacher stated for more than half an hour in the introduction section, yet the content described was not closely related to the key learning content of the lesson. After the introduction of the situation, the teacher went directly into the teaching of the main content of the lesson, without clearly conveying the learning objectives to the students, without emphasizing the important and difficult points of the lesson to the students, and the students passively accepted the teacher’s knowledge transfer. In the translation course, most teachers spend most of their time teaching new knowledge, and students’ exercises are mostly based on their own thinking, without discussion or interaction, and lack communicative application.
3) Teachers’ lectures are the main focus, and there is a lack of time for students to practice and discuss to promote in-depth thinking all teachers used PPT courseware in their courses, two teachers used paper teaching materials, and only one teacher used audio and video resources, although the relevant videos were too old. Teachers organized their lessons very well, with one teacher’s lecture time of 89 minutes indicating that little time was given to students to respond. The other five teachers had interactive questions and answers, but the time given to students was too little, the teacher’s lecture time was greater than 50%, and the number of active responses from students was lower than the number of passive responses, suggesting that the overall level of student participation in the classroom activities was not high. In one case, the teacher spent about 9 minutes asking the students 18 questions, indicating that the teacher-student interaction time was very short, and once the students could not answer the questions, the teacher would give the answers herself, and the question and answer session lacked guidance. Another teacher gave students time to answer and provided appropriate guidance, but there was no whole-class interaction. Instead, the interaction was limited to a two-way interaction between the teacher and the students being questioned. The number of group activities is decreased, students’ reports are restricted to individual or two-person groups, and the multi-person group reports lack mutual evaluation, resulting in a lack of a learning community.
Through classroom observation, the teaching model diagram of traditional translation courses is shown in Figure 1. This model diagram mainly feeds back the teaching mode of traditional translation courses which is mainly in class and after class, as well as the form of teaching activities which is mainly in the form of teacher’s lecturing and student’s practicing.
Traditional translation teaching model
The theory of constructivism was first proposed by the Swiss child psychologist Piaget research, Piaget believes that knowledge stems from experience, the acquisition of experience comes from a rich learning environment, and the construction of the learning environment is the key to effective learning for the learner, so constructivism advocates a learning environment that includes four basic elements: context, conversation, translation, and meaning construction.
1) Teaching in real situations. Constructivism focuses on the active construction or creation of knowledge with the help of modern media tools, which adds fun to teaching, and through which learners can gain unique individual meaning from experiences similar to real situations. At the same time, this kind of teaching close to the real can help students understand what is happening in their minds, so that learners can establish the connection between new and old knowledge through the personal participation of the whole learning experience.
2) Encourage learning behaviors through conversation and collaboration. “Collaboration” centers around the entire learning process, and is an important means of gathering and interpreting information, imagining and testing hypotheses, evaluating results, and constructing meaning. “Conversation”: a means of communication for collaborative learning, learning planning should be deployed according to the results of group members’ conversations and negotiations. At the same time, in the process of collaboration and conversation, the participants’ thought comprehension will be shared to the same group in the form of brainstorming, so it can also be said that in order to complete the meaning construction, conversation should be used as a communication medium.
3) Acquisition of knowledge in the construction of meaning. Knowledge is not instilled and disseminated by the teacher, but is “invented”, and “constructing” instead of “reflecting” better reflects the essential characteristics of learning. The process of learning knowledge is in a specific social and cultural context and centered on the learner, the learner to their own reserves of knowledge as the basis, with the help of external media to clarify the concepts, deep understanding of the knowledge extends the essence of the content and the structure of the vein, and then construct new knowledge.
The teaching methods for English translation in higher vocational colleges are as follows:
1) The English teaching and research room should be promoted and open the English activities of all kinds of students. Conduct enriching extracurricular activities such as English Corner and English translation competitions. 2) Establish a positive and effective evaluation mechanism. The evaluation of the learning level of the translation course should be changed in a single test mode, based on the student’s comprehensive ability of language, combining the process evaluation and the end sexual evaluation, and the importance of the formation evaluation.
English translation self-efficacy is the expression of self-efficacy in specific subject areas. Self-efficacy in English translation refers to the subjective judgment of an individual’s ability to perform English translation activities, and it is the student’s prediction of whether he/she can confidently complete the learning task when performing English translation activities.
Self-efficacy, in interaction with other factors, can affect students’ final academic performance. Therefore, academics have paid increasing attention to studying the intrinsic connection between self-efficacy and other factors. Self-regulation strategies have a positive correlation with self-efficacy. That is, learners with high self-efficacy use self-regulation strategies more frequently and are more persistent in the learning process. There is a positive correlation between self-efficacy and positive affective factors and a negative correlation with negative emotions, i.e., positive, positive academic emotions can motivate learners to actively participate in learning, while negative emotions may interfere with learning, reduce learning efficiency, and even lead to the emergence of anorexia. Students with a high sense of self-efficacy tend to accept challenges, control their behavior, and overcome difficulties, and are more likely to experience positive emotions brought by learning. Negative emotions like worry, fear, and frustration during English translation can make students doubt their ability to translate, increase learning anxiety, and decrease self-efficacy.
The Bayesian knowledge tracking model was originally proposed by Corbett A.T. and Anderson J.R. in 1995, and has since been widely used to measure learners’ mastery of knowledge points (KPs).
A KP is a basic unit of learning, like a word in word study or a formula in math study. The information of a simple KP usually includes the serial number, specific content, and difficulty of learning. The BKT model is suitable for learning this type of KP. In more complex learning processes, the connection between KPs is often taken into account, such as the KP of the area of a circle in math must be based on the learning of the radius of a circle.
The BKT model serves as an HMM that summarizes the teaching and learning process as a Hidden Markov Process, and the BKT model is shown in Figure 2. Where,
BKT model
In the KP tracking scenario, the knowledge status refers to the students’ mastery of all KPs, which cannot be directly observed, but can only obtain partial and partial information, i.e., the scores achieved by the students for each specific KP in the test. The whole learning process is the alternation of students’ learning and testing, and the BKT model collects information on students’ test results and learning behaviors to assess and track students’ current mastery of each KP in real time.
The BKT model is realized by the following three parameters and three formulas:
Knowledge Point Status:
Learning ability:
Exam Skills: Experience has shown that students who study well and those who do well in exams are not exactly equivalent. This is because test scores are affected by a number of factors, the most important of which is test skill. The test skill set consists of two parameters, (
State transfer formula: the model can calculate the probability of mastering a knowledge point in the next moment by the students’ learning ability and the probability of mastering a knowledge point in the previous moment, the formula is shown in equation (1):
Where,
The formula for the probability of answering correctly in the test: equation (2) represents the probability that a student will correctly answer a question on the knowledge point in the test:
The formula for the probability of answering incorrectly on the test: equation (3) represents the probability that a student will answer a question on the test incorrectly for that knowledge point:
This study uses the educational experiment method to verify the effects of higher vocational English translation teaching strategies on students’ translation levels and self-efficacy. The study takes 100 students from two classes in School Y as the research subjects, class A is designated as the experimental group and class B as the control group, with 50 students in each of the two classes. The students’ learning status in both classes was basically consistent, and the influence of interference factors such as learning attitudes was excluded. The experimental research technique was employed to investigate how higher vocational translation teaching strategies affect students’ English translation effectiveness.
In order to investigate whether there is a significant difference between the language level of the subjects in the experimental group and the control group, the researcher organized and analyzed the results of the English translation test papers of the two groups. The total number of participants in the English translation test is 100, and the experimental and control groups are both 50. The recovery rate of the test paper reaches 100%. The researcher collected and organized the data and then used descriptive statistics of SPSS25.0 software to analyze the pretest and posttest data of English translation scores of the two groups of students, and the statistical results are shown in Table 2.
Descriptive statistics of English translation grade before and after experiment
| Group | N | Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before experiment | Experimental group | 50 | 56.234 | 15.371 | 2.452 |
| Control group | 50 | 55.867 | 15.672 | 2.604 | |
| After experiment | Experimental group | 50 | 66.374 | 14.637 | 2.387 |
| Control group | 50 | 57.625 | 15.856 | 2.473 |
N in Table 2 indicates the number of samples. The mean value indicates the degree and level of concentration, and the standard deviation indicates the degree of dispersion of the mean data. As can be seen from the data in the table, the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group in the English translation test (pre-test) are 56.234 and 55.867, and although the mean score of the experimental group is slightly higher than that of the control group by 0.367, the gap between the groups is small. Secondly, the standard deviations of the two groups are 15.371 and 15.672, respectively. The degree of dispersion of the students’ English translation scores in the experimental group is slightly lower than that of the control group. However, by comparing the mean and standard deviation of the two groups, the difference is lower than 1. The results of the pre-test cannot indicate that the difference between the two groups’ performances is significant.
The mean scores of the experimental and control groups in the English translation test (posttest) were 66.374 and 57.625. The experimental group had a mean score 8.749 points higher than the control group. Secondly, the standard deviation of the experimental group is lower than that of the control group, indicating that the degree of dispersion of the English translation scores of the students in the experimental group is lower than that of the control group, i.e., the experimental group is less bifurcated. However, the results of this descriptive statistic cannot fully illustrate that the overall translation level of the students in the experimental group improved significantly after the experimental intervention compared with the control group.
Based on this, the researcher used independent samples t-test to analyze the data of English translation test pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups, and the analysis results are shown in Table 3. The correlation coefficients in Table 3 indicate the degree of linear correlation between the two variables, and “sig.” indicates the level of significance, if the value of sig. If the value is greater than 0.05, it means that there is no significant difference between the variables before and after. On the contrary, if the value of sig. If the value is less than 0.05, it means there is a significant difference between the variables before and after. The data in the table shows that the pre-test variance chi-square test results are significant with a value of 0.685>0.05, which implies that the variances are chi-square. The significant value of the hypothetical equal variance data in the first row of the table is 0.886, which is greater than 0.05, and the result indicates that there is no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group’s scores in the English translation test (pre-test). In addition, the lower and upper limits of the 95% confidence interval of the difference are -6.665 and 7.765, containing zero, which also indicates that there is no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group’s performance in the English translation test (pre-test). Through the comparative analysis of the results of descriptive statistics and independent samples t-test between the two groups, there is no significant difference between the scores of the experimental group and the control group in the English translation test (pre-test), so the English translation level of the two groups of students is more consistent.
Independent sample t test of English translation grade before and after experiment
| Levene’s test for equality of variances? | T-test for equality of means | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | Sig. | t | df | Sig.(2-tailed) | Mean difference | Std. error difference | 95% confidence interval of the difference | |||
| Lower | Upper | |||||||||
| Before | Equal variances assumed | 0.122 | 0.685 | 0.124 | 55 | 0.886 | 0.405 | 3.546 | -6.665 | 7.765 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 0.124 | 54.753 | 0.886 | 0.405 | 3.548 | -6.667 | 7.770 | |||
| After | Equal variances assumed | 0.005 | 0.945 | 2.422 | 55 | 0.018 | 8.042 | 3.458 | 1.208 | 15.145 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 2.421 | 52.673 | 0.018 | 8.042 | 3.461 | 1.202 | 15.151 | |||
The significance of the post-test variance chi-square test result is 0.945>0.05, indicating that the variance is chi-square. Therefore, reading the data in the third row of the table, the significant value is less than 0.05 (sig.=0.018), which indicates that there is a significant difference between the performance of the experimental group and the control group in the English translation test (posttest) and they are not at the same level.
In order to further explore the differences between the experimental group and the control group students’ English translation achievement in the pre and post-test, the researcher analyzed the data of the experimental group and the control group in the pre and post-test of the English translation achievement by using the descriptive statistics of the SPSS25.0 software, and the results of the analysis are shown in Table 4.
Descriptive statistics of experimental and control group
| Mean | N | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimental group | Before | 56.234 | 50 | 15.371 | 2.452 |
| After | 66.374 | 50 | 14.637 | 2.387 | |
| Control group | Before | 55.867 | 50 | 15.672 | 2.604 |
| After | 57.625 | 50 | 15.856 | 2.473 |
As can be seen from the data in Table 4, the average scores of students in the experimental group in the English translation pre and post-test were 56.234 and 66.374, and the post-test scores were significantly higher than the pre-test scores. In addition, the standard deviation of the experimental group in the pre and post-tests was 15.371 and 14.637, with the standard deviation reduced by 0.734, indicating that not only the average scores of the students in the experimental group improved after the experimental intervention, but also the standard deviation was reduced, i.e., the phenomenon of bifurcation was reduced.
The difference between the mean scores of the control group in the pre-test and post-test of English translation was 1.758, and the post-test score was higher than the pre-test score, with an increase of 0.184 in standard deviation, indicating that the mean scores of the students in the control group were improved after regular translation teaching, but the standard deviation was increased, i.e., the phenomenon of bifurcation was increased.
In order to further verify the significant difference between the pre- and post-test data of the experimental and control groups, a paired-sample t-test was conducted, and the test results are shown in Table 5. As can be seen from Table 5, the paired sample t-test mean value of the pre and post-test scores of the experimental group is -8.874, the standard deviation of the mean is 7.542, the standard error of the mean is 1.458, the t-value is -5.235, and the degree of freedom is 25, and the significance is 0.001<0.05, and the difference of the mean values of the pre and post-tests is significant, which indicates that the intervening variable, i.e., the strategy of teaching English translation in higher vocational education, has a significant effect on their English translation level.
Paired samples t test of experimental and control group
| Paired differences | t | df | Sig.(2-tailed) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | 95% confidence interval of the difference | ||||||
| Lower | Upper | ||||||||
| Experimental group | Before—After | -8.874 | 7.542 | 1.458 | -10.653 | -5.024 | -5.235 | 25 | 0.001 |
| Control group | Before—After | -1.257 | 20.316 | 3.014 | -7.218 | 4.645 | -0.425 | 24 | 0.625 |
The significance of the pre- and post-test scores of the control group is 0.625>0.05, and the difference between the pre- and post-test means is not significant, indicating that there is no significant difference between the pre- and post-test scores of the control group.
In order to examine the changes in learners’ self-efficacy before and after the experiment, the researcher distributed an English translation self-efficacy questionnaire before and after the experiment. The data collection and analysis of pre- and post-questionnaires were used to explore changes in students’ English translation self-efficacy.
Before the experiment, the researcher distributed the “Questionnaire on English Translation Self-Efficacy” to the experimental group and the control group to examine the changes in the students’ English translation self-efficacy before and after the experiment. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed in the pre-test stage, with 50 in the experimental group and 50 in the control group. One hundred questionnaires were returned, and the validity rate of the questionnaires was 100%. The statistical results of the pre- and post-test of translation self-efficacy in the experimental and control groups are shown in Table 6.
Descriptive statistics of self-efficacy before and after experiment
| Group | N | Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Before experiment | Experimental group | 50 | 75.522 | 4.672 | 0.683 |
| Control group | 50 | 76.235 | 4.358 | 0.572 | |
| After experiment | Experimental group | 50 | 86.453 | 3.126 | 0.542 |
| Control group | 50 | 77.237 | 3.748 | 0.615 |
As can be seen from the table, the average scores of the two groups are not much different, and the average score of the experimental group is 0.713 lower than that of the control group.The standard deviation of the mean of the English translation self-efficacy (pre-test) of the experimental group is 4.672, while that of the control group is 4.358, and the standard deviation of the control group is lower than the standard deviation of the experimental group, which means that the translation self-efficacy in the control group has a lower degree of polarization than that in the experimental group, and the scores are more stable. .
In the post-test, the mean value of translation self-efficacy of the experimental group was 86.453, and the mean value of translation self-efficacy of the control group was 77.237, and the mean value of the experimental group was 9.216 points higher, which is a big difference between the two groups. This shows that the self-efficacy of translation between the experimental and control groups formed a significant difference during the teaching experiment, with the experimental group being much higher than the control group. The standard deviations of the experimental group and the control group in the posttest are 3.126 and 3.748 respectively, which shows that the degree of dispersion of translation self-efficacy in the experimental group in the posttest is lower than that in the control group, indicating that the degree of polarization of translation self-efficacy in the experimental group after the experiment is lower than that in the control group, and that the experimental group’s performance is more stable.
In order to test whether there is a significant difference between the post-test English translation ability of the two groups, the researcher conducted an independent samples t-test on the pre and post-test English translation ability of the experimental group and the control group, and the results are shown in Table 7. The probability value of the ANOVA chi-square test for translation self-efficacy of the pre-test experimental group and the control group is 0.105, which is much smaller than 0.05, indicating that the data satisfy the requirement of ANOVA chi-square. The t-test results for variance of means show that the Sig. value is 0.675, which is more than 0.05, indicating that the experimental and control groups are not significant on the pre-test. The 95% confidence interval for the variance of the experimental and control groups is (-2.420, 1.565), where the interval contains 0. Therefore, there is no significant difference between the experimental and control groups on the pre-test of self-efficacy in English translation.
Independent sample t test of self-efficacy before and after experiment
| Levene’s test for equality of variances | T-test for equality of means | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F | Sig. | t | df | Sig.(2-tailed) | Mean difference | Std. error difference | 95% confidence interval of the difference | |||
| Lower | Upper | |||||||||
| Before | Equal variances assumed | 0.105 | 0.725 | -0.405 | 66 | 0.675 | -0.402 | 0.985 | -2.420 | 1.565 |
| Equal variances not assumed | -0.405 | 65.542 | 0.674 | -0.402 | 0.985 | -2.422 | 1.567 | |||
| After | Equal variances assumed | 1.215 | 0.224 | 12.034 | 66 | 0.001 | 9.547 | 0.763 | 8.036 | 11.126 |
| Equal variances not assumed | 12.062 | 64.872 | 0.001 | 0.762 | 3.461 | 8.039 | 11.123 | |||
The posttest Sig. The value is 0.001, which is less than 0.05, indicating that the experimental and control groups possess significant significance in English translation self-efficacy in the posttest. It shows that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of translation self-efficacy during the post-test.
The researcher analyzed the pre- and post-test data of English translation self-efficacy in the experimental and control groups within each group. To examine the effects of higher vocational English translation teaching strategies and conventional translation teaching on students’ English translation self-efficacy. Table 8 displays the statistical results of the pre- and post-tests on translation self-efficacy of the experimental and control groups.
Descriptive statistics of self-efficacy of experimental and control group
| Mean | N | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Experimental group | Before | 75.522 | 50 | 4.672 | 0.683 |
| After | 86.453 | 50 | 3.126 | 0.542 | |
| Control group | Before | 76.235 | 50 | 4.358 | 0.572 |
| After | 77.237 | 50 | 3.748 | 0.615 |
The post-test of the experimental group is 10.931 higher than the pre-test, which is a big difference. The standard deviation of translation self-efficacy in the experimental group is 4.672 in the pre-test and 3.126 in the post-test, which is lower than that of the pre-test, indicating that the degree of polarization of English translation self-efficacy of students in the experimental group has been improved and become more stable.
The mean value of translation self-efficacy in the control group is 76.235 in the pre-test and 77.237 in the post-test, and the standard deviation of the post-test is lower than the standard deviation of the pre-test, which indicates that the degree of polarization of the control group has been improved to some extent after the experiment. It can be seen that conventional English translation teaching can improve students’ English translation self-efficacy to a certain extent, but numerically, the improvement is not significant.
The researcher then conducted a paired-sample t-test on the English translation self-efficacy pre- and post-tests of the experimental group and the control group in order to test whether there is a significant difference between the English translation self-efficacy of the two groups before and after the experiment. The results of the paired-samples t-test for the pre- and post-tests of English translation self-efficacy in the experimental and control groups are shown in Table 9.
The 95% confidence interval of the difference scores of English translation self-efficacy pre- and post-tests of the experimental group is (-12.562, -10.824), and the interval does not contain 0. At the same time, the Sig. The value of 0.001 is lower than 0.05, which shows that there is a significant difference between the pre- and post-tests of translation self-efficacy in the experimental group. This means that the translation self-efficacy of the students in the experimental group was significantly improved after the teaching of English translation at a higher vocational level.
The Sig. value of the difference between the pre- and post-test scores of English translation self-efficacy of the control group is 0.001, which is less than 0.05, indicating that there is a significant difference between the pre- and post-test scores of English translation self-efficacy of the experimental group. Accordingly, it can be seen that conventional English translation teaching can improve students’ translation self-efficacy, but its effect is not as significant as that of the higher vocational English translation teaching strategy.
Paired samples t test of self-efficacy of experimental and control group
| Paired differences | t | df | Sig.(2-tailed) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error Mean | 95% confidence interval of the difference | ||||||
| Lower | Upper | ||||||||
| Experimental group | Before—After | -11.546 | 2.623 | 0.445 | -12.562 | -10.824 | -25.415 | 36 | 0.001 |
| Control group | Before—After | -1.637 | 1.115 | 0.154 | -2.228 | -1.415 | -10.332 | 37 | 0.001 |
This study investigates the current situation and problems of English translation teaching in higher vocational education and constructs a model of English translation teaching strategies for higher vocational education based on it. We look at the effect of the higher vocational English translation teaching strategy model on students’ English translation scores and English translation self-efficacy in the English translation teaching experiment.
1) The study conducted pre- and post-test analyses of the performance of students who were participating in an experiment of English translation teaching strategies in higher vocational education. In the pre-test data, the difference between the mean scores of the two groups is only 0.367 points (the experimental group is higher than the control group), and the sig. value is 0.886 (>0.05), which makes the difference between the scores relatively small. After the experiment, the difference between the mean scores of the two groups amounted to 8.749 points (the experimental group was higher than the control group), with a sig. value of 0.018 (<0.05), producing a significant difference in performance. After the experiment, the mean score of the experimental group increased by 10.140 points, and the standard deviation decreased by 0.734. The students in the experimental group improved not only their mean scores but also the phenomenon of bifurcation. The mean score of the control group only increased by 1.758 points, and the standard deviation increased by 0.184. Although the mean score of English translation for this group of students has improved, the degree of polarization has deepened.
2) The study conducted a pre- and post-test analysis to compare the English translation self-efficacy of the experimental group and the control group. Before the experiment, the experimental group’s mean self-efficacy was 0.713 points lower than the control group’s, and their standard deviation was 0.314 points higher than the control group’s. There wasn ‘t a big difference between the two groups’ translation self-efficacy, and the control group’s performance was more stable. After the experiment, the mean value of translation self-efficacy in the experimental group increased by 10.931 points, and its post-test mean was 9.216 points higher than that of the control group, which produced a significant difference in translation self-efficacy between the two groups. The experimental group had a standard deviation that was 0.622% less than that of the control group, and their performance was more stable than that of the control group.