An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Students’ Translation Competence On Their English Reading Comprehension In Senior High School Of Grade One

Translation acts as a bridge for people speaking different languages all over the world tocommunicate. Learning translation thus becomes beneficial for students to improve theiroverall competence of a foreign language. Therefore, the effect and importance of translationcan not be underestimated. In high school English teaching, although translation is not taughtas a specific subject matter, it serves as a basic language skill, which is closely connected withthe reading comprehension. Almost all kinds of tests are related to students’ comprehension ofsentences and passages. It is likely that students will understand the reading passages well ifthey are able to transfer between two languages, which highly demands the competence oftranslation. Thus this study aims to combine students’ translation competence with theirreading comprehension, and to discuss how to cultivate their translation competence in orderthat they understand reading passages well. It also intends to show that this improvedtranslation ability will inspire students to become interested in reading and ultimately upgradetheir reading comprehension.Guided by constructivism, translation teaching theories, and translation principles, thisstudy is conducted in the school where the author carried out her teaching internship. Theparticipants are85students chosen from two classes in Liaohe Oil Senior High School. Oneof the classes is Experimental Class, and the other is the Control Class. The whole experimentlasts for four months. In the Experimental Class, the students are first given a reading test andtheir scores are recorded. Then they are given15minutes each day to read and translate twopassages. All the passages are based on test papers. The author notes down each student’sreading score and compares it with standard translation in order to figure out the reasons forstudents’ mistakes. In the Control Class, however, students are taught in the normal wayrather than paying too much attention to translation. In addition, quizzes are regularly given toboth classes, through which the author gathers data to analyze the reading scores so that aconclusion is drawn.The results of the study show that students’ translation competence is closely related totheir reading ability and teaching translation ability is feasible in high school English teaching.The study has also made the following findings: Firstly, teachers can enhance the students’confidence and scores by cultivating their translation ability. Secondly, teachers can improvestudents’ learning interest and initiatives by cultivating their translation ability. In the end, the author put forward some suggestions for implementing this teaching approach. The first isconsideration of students’ language level or some students might lose interest due to too muchtranslation exercise. The second is a big challenge for teachers to apply translation intoteaching of reading. Since it will take much time to teach and learn translation, teachers needto make a reasonable plan to keep the balance between teaching reading and teachingtranslation.