A Case Study Of How Translation Teachers Make Sense Of Their Classroom Practices

Translation teacher plays a key role in the entire foreign language teaching area,however,the study of translation teacher is far less than or just carrying that of foreign language teaching area.Teacher?s belief is one of the decisive factors to teaching activities,which study had been expanded to every aspect in the field of foreign language teaching,such as specific subjects,teaching methods,and even teaching behaviors.Comparing with foreign language teaching,the teacher?s beliefs? study in translation teaching is rare,and hasn?t formed a certain scale.So,the exploring of translation teacher?s belief has both theory and practice meaning at the same time.The current study adopts an individual case study,gathering the information based on in-depth interview,non-participant classroom observation,and the collection of teaching materials,aiming at solving the following research questions:(1)what respectively are the beliefs of these two translation teachers on their teaching?(2)Are there any differences and similarities between the experienced and inexperienced translation teachers? beliefs?(3)If there so,what important factors result in these differences and similarities? Why?The main findings as follows:(1)there are a huge difference between inexperienced and experienced translation teachers,such as teaching age,teaching experience,and so forth,but they have some similarities on written translation teaching beliefs,such as,both sides agree the importance of both theory and practice,also support the irreplaceable role of translation practice,furthermore,both of them insist the cultivation of several non-language abilities apart from basic language ability.(2)Certainly,the difference is necessary thing.In contrast to experienced translation teachers,inexperienced translation teachers are inclining to the classroom teaching that mainly focuses on the feedback to translation practices,and they have a single classroom form.But for experienced translation teachers,they are intending to teach by combining both theory and practice,and with the supplement of rich teaching activities.So,the latter is more closing to the “real class”.(3)Then,inexperienced translation teachers prefer teacher-centred model,and experienced are basically adopting students-centred model in which they make fully use of the main body role of students and the main guidance role of teachers.(4)Experienced translation teachers have a better cognition on the following things: translation subject,machine translation,the role of textbook,and teacher-students interactions and so on.Inexperienced translation teachers have a better ability to accept the new things.(5)Despite overseas teaching experience isn?t the thing that every translation teacher can have,but it can more or less change their teaching beliefs at a certain level.(6)In the process of teaching,experienced translation teachers basically can?t be influenced by the contextual factors comparing to inexperienced translation teachers,which shares the same research results with foreign language teaching area.Besides,the study also finds that inexperienced translation teachers still adopt traditional teacher-centred teaching model.For the reasons,it may be caused by they haven?t built their own teaching system and still are at the primary phase,simultaneously it may be limited by the nature of written translation course.The current study will be conducive to the understanding of translation teaching beliefs to translation teachers,so as to let them to reflect their teaching practice and make some improvements.It also contributes to provide theory foundation to the development of translation teachers.Finally,the study can be regarded as an extension to unfounded completely area of translation teacher?s belief,hoping more and more researchers begin to pay attention to this area.