Using Google Translate for Academic English Writing Instruction

2020 Fiscal Year Research-status Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K00656
• Research Institution: The University of Aizu
• Principal Investigator: Heo Younghyon 会津大学, コンピュータ理工学部, 上級准教授 (10631476)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): Perkins Jeremy 会津大学, コンピュータ理工学部, 上級准教授 (30725635) ; Paik Incheon 会津大学, コンピュータ理工学部, 教授 (70336478)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-04-01 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: Machine-translated text

Outline of Annual Research Achievements

In 2020, class materials for teaching how to use Google Translate properly for academic English writing were developed. Class materials consist of four parts. First, machine learning can detect Google translated documents with high accuracy. Student can find it interesting to learn that Google translated text has its unique style and is quite different from human writing. Therefore, it is necessary to learn how to use it effectively and properly to make it sound more natural (like human-written). Second, machine-translated texts show its unique linguistic features. Students are introduced some actual examples of linguistic features found in Google translated texts. Third, based on the features discussed, students learn how to use Google Translate properly. Fourth, then they further learn how to use Google Translate to learn about writing skills. As one of the tips, it was suggested to avoid idiomatic expressions in Japanese. And also it was mentioned to avoid long original sentences with complex structures as Google translate generates ungrammatical sentences if the original sentence is very long with many subordinate clauses. In 2020, however, we could not finish creating all the materials because of the increased teaching prep due to the pandemic. We also could not introduce our materials in the Thesis Writing class because we were asked to reduce the materials we cover for online classes to reduce the burden of students taking the class online. This is why we asked for the extension of this project to 2021, and we will continue this research and complete it in 2021.

Current Status of Research Progress

4: Progress in research has been delayed.

Reason

With the pandemic continued in 2020, plans for the classes taught at our school changed a lot. The development of class materials was planned to be completed in early 2020, but there was a delay in schedule because of the increased teaching prep in the Spring semester. Instructors had to create online versions of the existing materials, and with the increased teaching prep, it was difficult to make all the educational materials we planned to create. Also, we were planning to provide these class materials in the Thesis Writing class in the fall of 2020, but again, with the changed mode of instruction and modified curriculum because of the pandemic, it was not easy to introduce new materials to the current materials. With the online mode of instruction, we were asked to reduce the materials we cover to reduce the burden of students who are taking classes online. We asked for the extension of this project to 2021, and we will complete the unfinished part in 2021.

Strategy for Future Research Activity

In 2021, we will finish up the creation of educational materials for teaching how to use Google Translate effectively and properly to generate more natural and accurate sentences. These materials will be used as part of Thesis Writing class I teach in the fall semester. There still remains the possibility of teaching the class online, but this time, students should be more familiar with the online mode of class, so introducing some new materials won't be too burdensome to students. Finally, we'd like to collect their feedback on our materials. After that, we will present it in a domestic conference to introduce the materials we created, our findings in this research and student feedback.

Causes of Carryover

This research was approved to be extended to 2021. We will hire some research assistants to analyze the student feedback on our educational materials. The research budget will also be used for the presentation of this research at a conference. All three researchers involved in this project will attend the conference.