摘 要

二语写作者常在写作中使用母语思维并进行翻译。国内外学者都曾探讨母语思维在二语写作中的迁移作用,但并未深入探究翻译对写作过程的意义。本文通过文本分析及回顾性访谈,旨在分析学生在二语写作过程，尤其在内容构思和文本输出中翻译使用的情况及影响二语写作中使用翻译的因素。研究表明，不同水平的学生在二语写作中都存在翻译现象，若利用恰当可提高文章质量，对文章的思想深度和逻辑表达都有深远影响。在二语写作过程中，学生的中文写作水平和英文水平也影响翻译的使用。本项研究对实现交叉学科教学，提高学生二语写作水平都有重要意义。

关键词：二语写作；翻译；写作过程；母语思维

Abstract

EFL writers often think in native language and translate later. There is a large amount of research focusing on the transfer of L1 thinking, and most researchers advocate to make the best use of translation instead of being entangled in whether translation brings positive transfer or negative transfer. However, few researchers pay attention to the effect and application of translation in EFL writing process. In this paper, text analysis and retrospective interview are conducted to find out how students use translation in EFL writing, especially in the process of idea-organizing and text-generating. This paper also investigates the factors that influence the use of translation. Results show that translation in EFL writing exists among students in different proficiency and it influences their writing process, especially in idea-organizing and text-generating. What’s more, proficiency in English and Chinese both affect the use of translation. This study plays a much more significant role in interdisciplinary teaching and in the development of students’ proficiency in EFL writing.

Key Words: EFL writing; translation; writing process; L1 thinking

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 2

3 Methods 5

3.1 Research questions 5

3.2 Participants 5

3.3 Data collection 5

4 Results 7

4.1 Text analysis 7

4.2 Interview results 9

5 Discussion 12

5.1 Role of translation in writing process 12

5.2 Factors that influence the use of translation in EFL writing 13

6 Conclusions 14

References 16

Acknowledgments 18

An Exploration of the Influence of Translation on EFL Writing

1 Introduction

Although the researchers in the EFL writing area reveal the existence of first language thinking and its inescapability (Friedlander, 1990; Cumming, 1989), they pay less attention to the translation part than the thinking part and neglect to stress the importance of translation. Yang emphasizes the importance of the writing proficiency in translation, but appropriate use of translation in EFL writing is not included. Among different phrases of students’ thoughts in the EFL writing process (Wangamp; Wen, 2002), two portions have direct relations to the use of translation: idea-organizing and text-generating, which can be a suitable entry for this research.

Based on the research background, this paper analyzes the EFL writing status at present and makes a qualitative analysis on the translation in EFL writing process from the perspective of its existence and significance. In-depth exploration will also be made in terms of the usage of translation and its relation to Chinese writing proficiency and English proficiency.

The first chapter of the paper is the introduction of the research in translation and EFL writing. The second part focuses on the introduction of empirical research in this paper. The third chapter is the specific empirical research, including the research questions, the participants and data collection. Then the following chapter shows the results of the outlines and essays as well as the feedbacks in the stimulated recall. The fifth chapter is the discussion of the data, analyzing the role of translation in the two sections of EFL writing-idea-organizing and text-generating and the elements that influence the use of translation in EFL writing-Chinese writing proficiency and English proficiency. At last, conclusion is made and suggestions are given on practical teaching with the intercommunity of EFL writing and translation, making the best use of translation and optimizing the writing pattern at present.

2 Literature Review

The study of EFL writing in China starts from the 1960s and the initial study of the research on EFL writing process focuses on the similarity between the writing processes of two languages. At present it focuses on four areas: (1) research on EFL writing process, including cognitive model and operational model, strategy of conception, individual differences among the learners and variation in different phases; (2)research on EFL writing products, including text analysis, error analysis, contrastive analysis, contrastive rhetoric analysis and corpus analysis; (3)research on EFL writing environment, including analysis of social structure and register, analysis of individual differences in terms of knowledge, motivation and requirement;(4)research on EFL writing teaching, including learning process, learning strategy, development of linguistic proficiency, classroom teaching, writing assessment and courseware development of writing on the internet.

The process of EFL writing is a complicated trans-lingual cognitive process and the thoughts in this process fell into five portions: task-examining（analyzing the writing prompt or commenting on the task），idea-generating（planning the content and evaluating it），idea-organizing（planning the organization and evaluating it），text-generating activities: （producing and reviewing the text）， process-controlling（ controlling the writing process, word and time limit, etc.）(Wang amp;Wen, 2002). There are also plenty of influencing elements: working memory, attention distribution, writing anxiety, audience awareness, task difficulty and writing strategy (Wang, 2007). Among these elements, metacognition plays a positive role and has significant positive correlation to the writing score (Han, 2008); working memory influences each section in EFL writing, especially the preparation and the process (Li amp; Wang, 2013;Wang, 2009). Attention attribution has a positive influence on the improvement of the process and quantity of the text (Liu, 2008; Zhao amp; Sun, 2009). Writing anxiety has a negative correlation to the grades of EFL writing while a positive correlation to the use of native language in thinking-aloud part (Zhou amp;Tang, 2010). Audience awareness helps students think on the view of the readers and dig into the characteristic and habit of English using (Xu amp; Gan, 2011). Besides, preparation is a significant section which is likely to be neglected (Ma, 2010) and the students are easier to have difficulty in organization and vocabulary in preparation. Students who are proficiency in writing spend much more time on this section to improve the quantity of outlines (Lv, 1997) while those at a relatively low level are restricted to modification of the spelling and grammar (Gao, 2008; Fan amp; Niu, 2009). What’s more, long-term memory and thought influence writing process a lot and lead to inter-lingual translation as well as intra-lingual translation, but students are able to find out the problems and correct the essays with teachers’ comments (Wang, 2013; Yuan amp; Xu, 2011).

The research of the process and sub-process of EFL writing is mostly done from the perspective of empirical research including quantitative research, case study, and experimental research with the main methods of thinking- aloud, stimulated recall and questionnaire survey. Friedlander (1990) finds that when the subject in writing comes to Chinese culture, most students will design outlines and chapters in Chinese and translate during the outputting process and this condition is related to students’ English standards. As for students’ bilingual thinking, Cumming (1989) conducts a test for twenty three English learners whose native language is French and finds that there is code switching in this process. Besides quantitative analysis, Kobayashi and Rinnert (1992) study further in definite quantity, so they ask forty eight Japanese students to give self-assessment. The result reveals that 17% of the students have more than 75% thinking in native language during the whole thinking process, 48% of them use it for 50%-75%, 27% of them use it for 25%-50%, and only 8% of them use it for less than 25%. For details in the EFL writing process, Guo and Liu (1997) apply Think Aloud (TA) to the experiment including ten senior high school students and two undergraduates. They find that in the comprehending part, 92% of the students process information with native language; in the outputting part, 60% of the content comes from the native language.

During the process, L1 thinking and translation cannot be separated from each other and the latter gives us a new aspect to study EFL writing, so in spite of the negative influence of native language, most researchers try to find out the positive transfer and make use of thinking and translation in native language, or to avoid the negative transfer to maximum extent. Students use native language frequently in EFL writing and are likely to manage and organize the process with the help of native language, but with the proficiency in English improved, the circumstances declined (Wang, Wen, 2002). Thus, student’s foreign language levels influence the choice of thinking and the usage amount of native language (Wang, 2005). In addition, the usage amount of native language has a negative correlation to the writing scores and it functions mainly on mediation of transformation, form research, content verification and program management (Guo, Liu, 1997). However, four Chinese second language learners participating in the experiment of Lay (1982) show that the learners who use more native language do better in content, organization and style than those who use less. Wang and Wen (2002) verify the using of thinking in native language according to the report of TA result of sixteen second language learners and find that the average use of L1 thinking is about 24%. They also establish an EFL writing model after the experiment.

As for the combination of translation and EFL writing, professor Yang (2012) brings up a theory of translational writing which shows us a new view to study EFL writing. Comparisons between writing and translation are made to find the intercommunity during the production process and his study aims to acknowledge translation and make the best use of translation in EFL writing, contributing to the translation environment. Nevertheless, the methods of combining translation in EFL writing need more attention which contributes to the EFL writing environment.

3 Methods

3.1 Research questions

To find out how translation matters in EFL writing, we are supposed to verify the existence of translation and analyze the motivation of the students. In response to the above needs, the present study focuses on students’ texts and their thoughts in the EFL writing class to answer the following two research questions:

1. How do EFL students use translation in the writing process?
2. What factors affect the use of translation in EFL writing?

3.2 Participants

Participants in this study were nine English majors in Wuhan University of Technology who were selected from the 25 students in an EFL writing class. They were all sophomores and would take the translation classes next year according to the teaching progress. Their native language was Chinese and English was their second language. One of them had studied in Australia for three years in middle school.