Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the actual situation of Japanese university students' use of machine translation (MT). The case study focuses on Japanese university students and not only investigates when students use MT, but also examines how their attitudes change before and after they use MT for their assignments. In this study, Google Translate was used as the MT tool, and Microsoft Excel was used for analysis. By analyzing these results, it was found that when students were allowed to use MT, they themselves decided whether or not to use it depending on their task. Of the skills in writing, reading and listening, it is also found that students tend to use MT the most for writing tasks and the least for listening tasks. In addition, no statistical significance of using MT was found for any of these skills, indicating that the use of MT does not necessarily mean that all language-related questions can be solved. These results could provide valuable data for the future introduction of MT into education. The survey included a diverse range of university students selected through an open application process. However, the sample size was limited, so an extensive survey should be undertaken in the future.

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