Descripción
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Abstract Spain is a country where learning languages is still difficult. Lack of tradition in teaching and learning languages and the profound sense of ridicule are deeply rooted in Spanish peoples? minds, even among young Spaniards. That is the reason why foreigners visiting Spain nowadays may still find difficult to communicate in English. The aim of this article is to explain the main reasons why we, teachers at the School of Architecture and the Mining Engineering School at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), have chosen to teach English by taking advantage of emotions? importance in the cognitive process. Affection plays a determining role in the way we learn and getting to use a language proficiently becomes easier when there are positive feelings linked to it. Most of the students who enrol in our courses at the Technical University of Madrid are either ERASMUS students or have participated in international workshops, and English has acquired for them a new emotional charge it did not have before. Therefore, when they return from their study time abroad we can attend very passionate oral presentations about the most diverse topics, like, for instance, low density in Oslo, Buddhism in Lassa, low cost construction in Phnom Penh, and so on, as our university participates of exchange programs in many different countries. By presenting their own experiences before the class, these students help their classmates to find out what they may want to do themselves in following years while also making it clear in their minds how important these experiences have been for their lives. In our opinion, those experiences have helped them to develop their critical thinking and acquire a social conscience that is a must for professionals in first world countries. At the same time, these students enable others to become aware of their own translation problems when presenting their ideas as, in most cases, their struggle to do so show the same doubts their classmates have as well.. We justify our proposal in theoretical terms by making reference to Piaget¿s theory of development, Whitehead¿s theory of growth, and a modern revision of their work. | |
Internacional
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Si |
DOI
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Edición del Libro
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Editorial del Libro
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Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki |
ISBN
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978-952-10-7374-8 |
Serie
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Título del Libro
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Current Trends in Training European Trranlators and Interpreters |
Desde página
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43 |
Hasta página
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66 |