機器翻譯與外語學習之探索研究

Abstract Machine Translation (MT) tools have advanced to a level of reliability such that it is now opportune to consider their place in language teaching and learning. Given their potential, the current study sought to instruct EFL college sophomores to engage in recursive editing afforded by Google Translate (GT) for one semester, and investigated (1) whether the learners were able to correct errors assisted by GT, (2) whether GT facilitated better writing, (3) which aspects of writing, fluency, complexity or accuracy GT better assisted the learners with, and (4) the students’ attitudes toward GT. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted where the experimental group received training in recursive editing while the control group did not. Both groups completed an error-correction test and an essay task pre and post intervention. The experimental group completed an additional questionnaire post intervention. The results showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on the error correction test. Both groups also showed significant increases in the different aspects of writing evaluated however, a significant difference between the groups was not found. The evaluation of writing fluency, accuracy, and complexity yielded a mixed picture. The control group demonstrated significantly better fluency in terms of sentence, clause, and T-unit counts but not total word count. The experimental group demonstrated significantly higher syntactic complexity in terms of mean length of clause. The experimental group also performed significantly better on post-intervention accuracy. Finally, the students were generally positive about using GT to learn in terms of anxiety, motivational belief, and task complexity.