Undertaking Online Collocation Dictionary to Enhance Textual Translation Ability: An Experimental Study of Mainland Chinese EFL Learners

Abstract

Collocation competence, if incontestably stated, poses a significant influence on ESL/EFL
students’ writing performance alongside mutual communication effectively. Even so, very
limited attempt was made to clarify the relationship between learners’ collocation competence
and textual translation ability. The objectives of current paper were to: 1) examine Chinese EFL
university learners’ collocation knowledge and their textual translation ability before and
following the treatment of collocation-based instruction; 2) observe the correlation between
Chinese EFL university learners’ collocation knowledge and their textual translation ability;
and 3) to explore on effects of instruction adopting online English collocation dictionary on
Chinese university learners’ textual translation ability. This study in terms of research design
was quantitatively conducted along with an experimental and control group being compared.
The control group (N=38) received a generally-traditional vocabulary instruction while the
experimental group (N=37) was conducted with the use of an online collocation dictionary as
intervention. Results suggested: 1) a significant improvement was found in collocation
knowledge and textual translation ability after the treatment; 2) collocation knowledge and
textual translation ability were found significantly and positively correlated. The research
outcomes substantially provided evidences of the relationship between collocation competence
and textual translation ability. With this in mind, it can benefit EFL teaching by offering writing
teachers with practical guidance on how collocation knowledge enables to serve as an optimal
solution to EFL learners’ problem with textual translation production.