Forgiven, not Forgotten: Communicative Translation Activities in Second Language Teaching

Although frequently discarded and despised in the 20th century, translation now seems to find wider acceptance within the Second Language Teaching (SLT) field. However, it still has a long way to go before recovering its due place in the L2 classroom. The aim of this paper is to suggest a number of translation (and interpreting)-based activities covering the different competence levels, thus showing that communicative content and translation can perfectly go hand in hand so that old, unjustified prejudices can be superseded once and for all.

Características del desarrollo de una mirada profesional en estudiantes para profesor de matemáticas en un contexto b-learning

Esta investigación presenta un estudio cuyo objetivo es identificar aspectos que apoyan el desarrollo de la mirada profesional en estudiantes para profesores de matemáticas en un contexto b-learning. Analizamos las producciones de un grupo de estudiantes para profesores de matemáticas de educación secundaria (documentos escritos y participaciones en un debate on-line) cuando analizaban el razonamiento proporcional de estudiantes de educación secundaria. Los resultados indican que la interacción en el debate en línea permitió a algunos estudiantes para profesor mejorar su capacidad de identificar e interpretar aspectos relevantes del pensamiento matemático de los estudiantes de educación secundaria. Estos resultados indican que el desarrollo de “una mirada profesional” del profesor es un proceso complicado pero que la posibilidad de construir un discurso progresivo en línea es un factor importante para su desarrollo.

The importance of promoting multimodal teaching in the foreign language classroom for the acquisition of social competences: practical examples

This article analyses the way in which the subject English Language V of the degree English Studies (English Language and Literature) combines the development of the five skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing and interacting) with the use of multimodal activities and resources in the teaching-learning process so that students increase their motivation and acquire different social competences that will be useful for the labour market such as communication, cooperation, leadership or conflict management. This study highlights the use of multimodal materials (texts, videos, etc.) on social topics to introduce cultural aspects in a language subject and to deepen into the different social competences university students can acquire when they work with them. The study was guided by the following research questions: how can multimodal texts and resources contribute to the development of the five skills in a foreign language classroom? What are the main social competences that students acquire when the teaching-learning process is multimodal? The results of a survey prepared at the end of the academic year 2015-2016 point out the main competences that university students develop thanks to multimodal teaching. For its framework of analysis, the study draws on the main principles of visual grammar (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) where students learn how to analyse the main aspects in multimodal texts. The analysis of the different multimodal activities described in the article and the survey reveal that multimodality is useful for developing critical thinking, for bringing cultural aspects into the classroom and for working on social competences. This article will explain the successes and challenges of using multimodal texts with social content so that students can acquire social competences while learning content. Moreover, the implications of using multimodal resources in a language classroom to develop multiliteracies will be observed.