Guided inquiry and project-based learning in the field of specialised translation: a description of two learning experiences

Abstract

In recent years, university offices for learning and teaching have encouraged their teaching staff to innovate and become teachers as well as to adapt assessment methods to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). The need to adjust the learning-teaching process to the EHEA has indeed prevented us from further postponing a discussion that has been acknowledged as necessary for years: why are our students failing to learn as they should or as we would like them to? As teachers, we usually put the blame on our students and neglect the fact that we might be using the wrong approach. In this article, we present the design of two learning experiences implemented in two specialised translation courses taught in the fourth year of the Degree in Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vigo, in Spain, and we discuss the implementation of constructivism-based tasks and techniques in the classroom. Particularly, we focus on Guided Inquiry (GI) in the Business Translation course and on Project-Based Learning (PBL) and peer review in the Scientific and Technical Translation course. The work closes with a discussion of the main results, in terms of both students' performances and their reactions to the new learning experiences.