Open AccessIntegrating Machine Translation Into EFL Writing Instruction: Process, Product and Perception
Author(s) -
Jian Wang,
Xinli Ke
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of language teaching and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2053-0684
pISSN - 1798-4769
DOI - 10.17507/jltr.1301.15
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , computer science , mainland china , mathematics education , machine translation , perception , second language writing , psychology , linguistics , natural language processing , second language , china , social psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , political science , law
Although there is a great demand for machine translation (MT) among language learners, its potentials as a computer-assisted language learning aid remain under-explored. Against this backdrop, this study adopted a mixed research method and conducted a semester-long empirical investigation into how EFL learners in mainland China used MT to assist their writing, whether MT helped improve their writing competence and how they perceived MT in EFL writing instruction. The major findings comprise: 1) By using MT students made more lexical and grammatical changes in essay revision; 2) MT helped improve the learners’ overall writing competence, and particularly had a greater effect on writing accuracy and lexical complexity than on other dimensions; 3) Students generally held a positive attitude towards incorporating MT into EFL writing instruction.