Vocabulary Alignment in the Continuation Task of Translation

Abstract

Abstract Alignment effect in language research refers to the social cognition process in which people cooperate, adjust, and adapt to each other in interaction. Through empirical study, this paper explores alignment effect in the continuation task of translation (CTOT) and its possible influence on learning of English as foreign languge (EFL). The study was carried out by means of a CTOT. Participants were chosen from non-English major freshmen of similar capacity from a university in Guangzhou. They were divided into two groups, the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG), with 13 students each. The students in EG were asked to carefully read some English-Chinese bilingual material. Then, the 26 participants were tasked with translating the paragraphs, which followed from Chinese into English. After that, they were asked to write down the words and expressions which they found difficult. Some of the participants were interviewed one month later for a deeper understanding of their memories of the vocabulary and their opinions on the CTOT. The data were analyzed by direct comparison and non-parametric test. The results showed that vocabulary alignment does occur in CTOT. The EG members tended to take advantage of words that appeared in the bilingual reading text. If multiple words from the reading appeared, with the same contextual meaning, they tended to choose the repeated words. As for influence of vocabulary alignment on EFL learning, it seemed that CTOT could not improve the quality of the translation itself, but could assist short-term vocabulary learning though no significant help to long-term vocabulary learning was revealed. The findings of this study provide support and explanation for some features and effects of CTOT, an important form of CT. However, the nature of CTOT itself, and its role in EFL learning deserve further research.