The Use of Translation Activities in Chinese Grammar Teaching

Properly designed translation practice serves as an effective foreign language (FL) teaching method to improve students’ four language skills (Duff, 1994). This study investigates whether translation tasks could facilitate FL Chinese grammar acquisition and teachers’ grammar teaching. Furthermore, it examines which pedagogical method (i.e., explicit or implicit) supports teaching with translation tasks in class. The study employed a quasi-experimental research design involving 90 undergraduate students in an FL Chinese language course with the objective of learning ten specific linguistic structures. Participants were assigned to one of three classes: Class A was taught using proactive explicit grammar with translation tasks focusing on forms and structures; Class B was taught using proactive implicit grammar teaching with inductive grammatical learning from translation tasks; and Class C was taught using reactive explicit instruction without translation tasks. All participants wrote a pre- and post-test to measure the learning effect between groups. Results show that (1) Class A and B showed higher post-test results, suggesting that translation tasks are effective for Chinese grammar teaching; and (2) the explicit approach used in Class A is relatively better for FL grammar teaching. The study suggests a way to maximize the effects of translation activities in class.