Reverse subtitling in the ESP class to improve written skills in English: addressing international students' needs

The improvement of foreign language (L2) skills is of paramount importance in the university context, and a considerable number of students lack linguistic proficiency in their oral and written communication skills. This lack of proficiency needs to be properly addressed and methodologies employed i...

ver descrição completa

Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor: Ávila Cabrera, José Javier
Formato: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Recursos:Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
Repositorio:e-spacio. Repositorio Institucional de la UNED
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:e-spacio.uned.es:20.500.14468/24089
Acesso em linha:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14468/24089
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palavra-chave:57 Lingüística
reverse subtitling
undergraduate students
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
international students’ needs
foreign language learning (FLL)
Descrição
Resumo:The improvement of foreign language (L2) skills is of paramount importance in the university context, and a considerable number of students lack linguistic proficiency in their oral and written communication skills. This lack of proficiency needs to be properly addressed and methodologies employed in order to help students improve such skills. There are many cases in which international students, whose cultural background is either European or Asian, need to improve their oral and written production in English as an L2. This paper presents a study conducted at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid throughout the 2017–2018 academic year, in which a number of undergraduate students enrolled in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) used reverse subtitling, from Spanish or Chinese into English, as a learning tool. The main focus of this case study was to enable students to improve their written skills in English through the combined use of Business English and reverse subtitling in accordance with the course content and expectations. A mixed method was used in order to gather and evaluate quantitative and qualitative data. This study therefore aims to bring to the fore the potential of using reverse subtitling in the ESP class.