Rikkyo University Graduate School of Intercultural Communication Masaru Yamada Laboratory, Yaraku Co., Ltd., and Tachi-S Co., Ltd. jointly conducted a demonstration experiment (MTILT) to utilize AI translation to improve English skills, and there was a change in the English skills of the participants. proved something.
Machine Translation In Language Teaching (common name: MTILT) means the use of machine translation in language learning.With the remarkable development of AI such as ChatGPT and machine translation (MT) in recent years, the necessity of learning languages has begun to be questioned. It is important to acquire MT literacy, which is a skill of
Tachi-S, which participated in the demonstration experiment, is actively conducting English learning training for its employees.The number of overseas subsidiaries has increased year by year, and internal communication has been conducted in both Japanese and English.Therefore, in collaboration with Rikkyo University and Yaraku, we decided to conduct a demonstration experiment of MTILT, which uses the AI translation platform "YarakuZen" developed by Yaraku to give lectures to the company.
Twenty people with English proficiency levels from CEFRA 2 to B1 (approximate based on TOEIC Reading & Listening scores) participated in the MTILT demonstration experiment.The participants are usually busy with development work and do not have much time to study, but many of them have a certain degree of MT literacy regarding the characteristics and usage of machine translation.
The demonstration experiment was conducted for about 2022 months from November 11 to February 2023, once every other week, about 2 hour each time, a total of 4 times.In addition to learning the outline and methods of pre-editing (the work of correcting the original text so that it can be easily translated by machine translation) and post-editing (the work of human translators correcting the translated text generated by machine translation), the lecture content is mainly , knowledge that should be known when using machine translation (mechanism of machine translation and linguistic knowledge), the meaning of learning English in the era of machine translation, and guidelines for learning.
As a result of the experiment, 80% of the participants answered that they had less difficulty with English, when asked, "Do you think that the hurdles to using English have decreased after taking the MTILT lectures?" I answered.In addition, 57.1% of the respondents "pre-edited" before attending the lecture, but after the lecture, 1.5%, 85 times more, answered that they began to "pre-edit".Learning how to use machine translation has resulted in changes in my awareness of English and my ability to respond to English.
Rikkyo University's Yamada Laboratory, which participated in the demonstration experiment, said, ``For foreign language learning and translation work, for example, the act of 'looking up a dictionary' is important. If access to reference materials, including electronic dictionaries and paper dictionaries, becomes a hassle, the number of times you look up a dictionary will decrease. If you don't have access to and the skills to use electronic tools, you won't even be able to use them.First of all, changing mindsets and learning small tricks about these aspects will help reduce your overall weakness in learning English. It may be mitigated," he said.
