Email this article English for tourism: Using translated texts in the classroom to improve writing skills
Abstract
Abstract – The article reports on the preliminary results a project aimed at developing the writing skills of elementary and lower-intermediate learners of English for Tourism. Coursebooks for the global market include writing activities and resources, but they usually do not take into account the learners’ L1 and their natural tendency to resort to it in the language classroom. As a consequence, in spite of progress in grammatical and lexical accuracy, learners’ written production often remains largely influenced by their L1 syntax, vocabulary and rhetorical strategies. This may have a negative impact on their ability to communicate effectively in the professional domain. Translation has been successfully used with advanced learners of ESP to exploit this tendency to relate the L1 and L2 lingua-cultural systems. However, translating can be too challenging for low-proficiency learners. To overcome this difficulty and obtain the same benefits offered by translation tasks, learners were asked to work on two small comparable and parallel corpora of English and Italian guidebooks. The corpus-based, compare/contrast activities maintained a high level of interest in the learners and directed their attention towards the linguistic, stylistic and cultural features of the genre. Post-testing shows that this approach had a positive impact on both specialised and general proficiency in English.
Abstract – L’articolo discute i primi risultati di un progetto mirato a sviluppare le abilità di scrittura di apprendenti italofoni di lingua inglese per il turismo con un livello iniziale elementare e intermedio basso. I libri di testo pensati per il mercato globale presentano attività di scrittura corredati da modelli di testi rappresentativi dei vari generi della comunicazione turistica, ma tali materiali didattici non tengono conto né della L1 degli apprendenti, né della loro naturale tendenza a utilizzarla in classe. Nonostante i progressi osservabili nell’accuratezza sintattica e lessicale, la produzione scritta degli apprendenti spesso resta segnata da un forte influsso della sintassi, del lessico e delle strategie retoriche della loro prima lingua, con risultati deleteri sulla loro abilità di comunicare efficacemente in ambito professionale. La traduzione è stata usata con successo con apprendenti di inglese per scope speciali di livello avanzato al fine di sfruttare la loro tendenza a collegare i sistemi lingua-culturali della L1 e della L2. Tuttavia, le attività traduttive possono rivelarsi una sfida troppo ardua per apprendenti con una competenza della lingua straniera limitata. Partendo dall’ipotesi che attività su corpora comparabili e paralleli potessero contribuire a superare questo limite e ottenere gli stessi benefici offerti dalla traduzione, agli apprendenti è stato chiesto di svolgere varie tipologie di compiti incentrati sui testi inclusi in due micro-corpora di guide turistiche in italiano e in inglese. I risultati preliminari sembrano indicare che le attività corpus-based svolte sui testi in prospettiva contrastiva contribuiscono a mantenere alto il livello di interesse degli apprendenti, indirizzando la loro attenzione verso le caratteristiche distintive del genere al livello linguistico, stilistico e culturale. Il post-testing indica, inoltre, che questo approccio ha avuto un impatto positivo non solo sulla competenza dell’inglese specialistico ma anche di quello generale.References
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