Poster Session Student Perceptions of Machine Translation more

Owing to the recent exponential advancement in machine translation (MT) technologies, integrating these resources by students in tertiary educational settings has become a widespread practice worldwide. In language education, however, issues have emerged among teachers concerning the reliability of their output and the maintenance of ethical standards. As studies have suggested (e.g., Lee, 2021), this has led to MT technology being considered as unacceptable and unnecessary in the language classroom especially for lower-proficiency students. This quantitative and qualitative small-scale study aims to examine university students’ use of MT technologies and the benefits and challenges they encounter through the English language learning process. Data for this study was collected through a questionnaire with undergraduate students enrolled in spoken communication courses at universities in Japan. The findings of this study suggest that students are accustomed to various MT technologies, with most recognizing their advantages, especially in enhancing confidence in using the target language and improving overall language proficiency. The results also indicate that the majority of students recognize the benefits of using MT as an instructional assistant and critically evaluate its output by applying self-regulated learning strategies developed through the educational training they have received in the past.