Develop an effective English teaching method by utilizing machine translation--from a perspective of writing teaching

2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K13268
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Jobu University
• Principal Investigator: SATAKE YUKINOBU 上武大学, ビジネス情報学部, 講師 (20815807)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
• Keywords: 第二言語習得 / 機械翻訳 / 英語ライティング / 中間言語 / インプット / アウトプット / 長期記憶

Outline of Final Research Achievements

When Japanese university students were engaged in learning English writing in the style of receiving the teacher's feedback (receiving feedback about their writing from teacher and applying it to their next writing) and in the style of utilizing machine translation (comparing Japanese sentences and their English versions translated by machine translation and applying it to their next writing), it turns out that their writing performance when they were engaged in the former style was more highly evaluated than the one when they were engaged in the latter style in almost all linguistic features, but it was not necessarily so in terms of style, vocabulary, etc. After analyzing their interview comments, this phenomenon is thought to be due to the following fact: The style and vocabulary used in machine translation are new or a little surprising to them because they have not learned them in junior and senior high schools, which is thought to lead to their long-term memory of them.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

日本の伝統的な英語教育は機械翻訳の使用を一方的に禁止してきた観がある。これは機械翻訳の性能がさほど高くなかった時代においては妥当な判断だと言えるかもしれない。しかし昨今の機械翻訳は、ChatGPTの例を見ても分かるように、日本人学習者が思いも及ばないような「自然な」英文を産出することが可能となっている。これは、機械翻訳が膨大な英語使用のビッグデータに基づいている一方、日本人の英語学習はまずは文法ありきで、大量の用法のインプットが欠落していることに起因すると考えられる。今回の調査結果は、日本人の英語ライティング学習にとって、機械翻訳は一つのロールモデルになり得る可能性を示唆したと言えるだろう。