Study Of The Effect Of Direct Feedback And Metalinguistic Explanation Feedback On Translation Achievements Of Non-English Majors

Corrective feedback is widely used in second language acquisition.According to the strategies of giving feedback,it can be divided into direct feedback and indirect feedback.Metalinguistic explanation feedback is one of the indirect feedback strategies.Metalinguistic explanation feedback and direct feedback are involved in this research.Until now,majority of linguistics affirm the positive role of corrective feedback played in second language acquisition process.However,there are few studies focus on comparing the effectiveness of metalinguistic explanation feedback and direct feedback,and few studies focus on the effectiveness of metalinguistic explanation feedback and direct feedback on translation achievement and grammatical errors on non-English majors.Therefore,this study aims to answer the following two questions: 1)Can direct feedback and metalinguistic explanation feedback improve non-English major students’ Chinese-to-English translation achievements effectively? 2)Can direct feedback and metalinguistic explanation feedback reduce non-English major students’ Chinese-to-English translation errors effectively? The researcher used translation tasks in five pieces of the CET-4 Tests in 2019,2020 and 2021 as the instrument.Taking two classes of non-English majors in their sophomore year of Northwest Normal University(27 students in Class A,receiving metalinguistic explanation feedback;32 students in Class B,receiving direct feedback),a total number of 59 students as subjects.All students were asked to complete and submit five pieces of translation tasks in total.After students handing in their translation tasks each time,the researcher provided feedback for the errors in each piece of translation task,taking the errors in students’ first translation tasks as the data of pretest and the errors in students’ the fifth translation tasks as the data of post test.The experimental results showed that:1.Both direct feedback and metalinguistic explanation feedback effectively improved non-English major students’ Chinese-to-English translation achievements,and no significant difference existed.2.Both direct feedback and metalinguistic explanation feedback effectively reduced non-English majors’ Chinese-to-English translation errors.Direct feedback was better than metalinguistic explanation feedback in reducing Syntax Errors and Mechanical Errors,while metalinguistic explanation feedback was better than direct feedback in reducing Morphology Errors and Rhetorical Errors.Therefore,direct feedback and metalinguistic explanation feedback can improve non-English major students’ Chinese-to-English translation achievements.Also,they can reduce non-English major students’ Chinese-to-English translation errors.Teachers need to choose appropriate feedback strategies based on translation error types in order to improve non-English majors’ translation achievements better.