An Empirical Study Of Cultivating Vocational College Students’ Specialty English Translation Competence Based On Process-Oriented Approach

Recent years have witnessed a rapid development of higher vocational education.Against the background of China’s more frequent communication with foreigncountries, English teaching is in a superior position in Higher Vocational TechnicalCollege (HVTC). According to the basic requirements for Higher VocationalTechnical Education English Course issued by Ministry of Education, Englishteaching in HVTC should lay emphasis on educating practical talents, and it isimportant to promote the judicious blend of English teaching and social demands.Non-English major students account for the majority in HVTC, they will inevitablyencounter some translation tasks after graduation. Unfortunately, a large number ofHVTC graduates show a complete lack of translation competence, which willnegatively influence the communication and cause losses on their employers. Thereason may lie in the HVTC students’relatively poor English competence, while thefact that most of the translation courses designed for non-English majors were carriedout with product-oriented approach, which cannot motivate the students to study, mayattribute to such a situation. So, English teachers in HVTC should ponder on how toimprove the non-English major students’English translation competence with a moreeffective approach, and foster the technical talents with English-applying ability intheir future job.An empirical research was conducted in the present study on 30 subjects, aiming tofind out how to improve HVTC students’ specialty English translation competence onthe basis of process-oriented method, and to test the effectiveness of the method.The subjects majoring in computer science were from Jinan EngineeringVocational and Technical College. In the experiment, they were divided into twogroups according to class division. One is the experimental group who participated ina process-oriented class, while the other is the control group that studied in atraditional product-oriented class. The whole experiment lasted for three months. Theexperiment included such steps as the pre-test, the process of developing translationcompetence and the post-test. Questionnaires，tests as well as follow-up interview were adopted as the experiment instruments.According to the data collected from the questionnaires, tests and the follow-upinterview, the findings are shown as follow: Nearly all subjects in both groupspromoted their English translation competence after the experiment. Subjects in theexperimental group in particular made more remarkable progress than those in thecontrol group, and their translation enjoyed high evaluation of potential clients. Theinterview indicated that the process-oriented approach was popular with subjects inthe experimental group. In HVTC, it could positively motivate students to deal withproblems encountered in translation, and improve their translation competence.This research lends itself to call attention of English teachers to the importance ofspecialty English translation competence of non-English majors in HVTC, and topresent a new perspective for the improvement of translation teaching methods.