The Impact of Corpus-Based Back-Translation Research on Enhancing English Writing Skills in High Schools --The Economist as an Example

Abstract

Currently, under the background of the new curriculum reform of the college entrance examination, the requirement of students' ability in the practical use of the English language is more and more emphasized, but the students' writing ability has not improved synchronously, and low-level errors and unorthodox expressions are often found in test writing. In order to analyze the inappropriate expressions in students' writing and improve their writing ability, the author introduces "back-translation" in the field of translation as a teaching method. Back-translation training is conducted with a focus on 30 selected students. These students are exposed to moderately challenging statements extracted from foreign magazines, designed to resemble the content found in high school students' test writing. Subsequently, a corpus of these students' translations is compiled for analysis. This analysis involves a comparison of their translated work with the original language used in the foreign magazines. This process serves to evaluate the writing proficiency of the students. Through the comparison with the original language of the foreign journals, this study analyzed the inappropriate aspects of the students' vocabulary to improve the accuracy of vocabulary expression to improve the writing ability and avoid the expression of "Chinese English". The study shows that the bilingual frequent interaction back-translation teaching method can help students understand the differences between Chinese and English expressions, and it can enhance students' subjective initiative in English writing and increase their active vocabulary compared with the mechanized template teaching.