Pedagogically Customized Machine Translation for Cultivating Critical Thinking in Foreign Language Education

Existing research lacks an integrative framework that systematically incorporates machine translation (MT) into critical thinking development. Guided by technological pedagogical content knowledge theory and constructivist learning theory, this study employed a 16-week quasi-experimental design to examine MT's impact on cultivating critical thinking in foreign language education. A customized MT system was implemented alongside a three-stage scaffolded task sequence. Results demonstrated significant postintervention improvements in translation accuracy (19.54% increase), critical thinking capacity (44.19% increase), and cultural adaptation competence (36.84% increase), along with evidence of more sophisticated tool-utilization strategies. This study offers both theoretical and practical significance by providing educators with replicable implementation guidelines.