The effect of structured oral translation on syntactic complexity and user experience.

摘要

Adults with basic writing abilities often have problems in online classes. This study tested a writing model with 95 undergraduate native speakers of English to examine whether a technology-based writing model could diminish burdens on working memory during the writing process. It was proposed that splitting the translation stage of writing into two sub-steps, text generation and transcription, would affect syntactic complexity. In traditional writing models, text is written on the page or on the computer screen with these two sub-steps occurring simultaneously. Structured Oral Translation (SOT) attempted to divide this process by using audio recordings for text generation, which was then typed into a word processing program during transcription. This was predicted to free writers of grammatical and spelling rules and to cancel the split-attention effect that can occur when looking at two separate documents, i.e. an outline and a written draft. Furthermore, this study sought to determine which learners, if any, most benefited from this writing model using aptitude-treatment interaction research. Finally, this study was a mixed methods model, with the last research question being concerned with the nature of the user's experience with SOT. While no differences were found between traditional writing models and SOT when looking at syntactic complexity or specific users, qualitative responses indicate that many users enjoyed or benefitted from the process or would recommend it to others.