Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics - Online First

This paper presents the results of SUBFILM, a teaching innovation project that studied the benefits of reverse didactic subtitling to improve both foreign language learning writing skills and general translation skills. Didactic subtitling is to be understood here as the active production of subtitles by the students within a guided online task. SUBFILM made use of complete short films as basic audiovisual resources, and students of a Translation course within the degree of English Studies at a Spanish university were asked to subtitle them from Spanish into English over a period of one and a half months. A total of 26 students finished the project, where interdisciplinary individual and collaborative learning were constantly being stressed. A quasi-experimental research design including diverse data gathering tools has provided sufficient evidence to prove the benefits of reverse subtitling of complete short films for the enhancement of translation skills and writing production, as well as for vocabulary and grammar proficiency. Hence, the conclusions derived from the study complement previous research and open new related paths for didactic subtitling research and practice.

En la configuración de los gestos emblemáticos o emblemas intervienen cuatro elementos: la forma, el significado, el uso y las unidades léxicas asociadas. Estos elementos se relacionan intrínseca y dependientemente en la comunicación, pero no de manera unívoca: para un mismo gesto pueden aparecer diferentes exponentes verbales que comparten el mismo significado. El objetivo de este trabajo es determinar una metodología que establezca el núcleo semántico de estos gestos, de manera que pueda utilizarse como denominación homogénea y sistemática a la hora de referirnos a ellos en investigaciones, repertorios y diccionarios kinésicos. Para ello, se proponen una nómina de criterios no excluyentes y se lleva a cabo la propuesta para encontrar el núcleo semántico de 25 emblemas del español de España. Específicamente, se considera la relación icónica entre el significado y la forma de cada gesto, se elabora una prueba de reconocimiento y denominación con hablantes nativos, se examinan diez inventarios gestuales y se analiza la presencia y marca lingüística de las diferentes unidades léxicas asociadas a cada emblema en cinco diccionarios de la lengua española. A partir de los anteriores, se propone una denominación para cada uno de los 25 gestos analizados.

El presente experimento analiza las divergencias entre la autoevaluación que un grupo de 40 hablantes de español como L2 emite sobre su grado de comprensibilidad, acento extranjero y fluidez, y las evaluaciones que recibe por parte de dos grupos de jueces: 109 No expertos sin experiencia en la enseñanza y 42 Expertos o profesores de español como L2. El propósito del experimento es analizar las diferencias entre estas evaluaciones considerando los grados de desempeño de los hablantes, ya que diversos estudios han demostrado que los participantes con peor competencia tienden a sobrevalorar su habilidad, mientras que aquellos situados en lo alto de la escala tienden a subestimarla ( Kruger & Dunning, 1999 ). Este efecto, conocido como «Dunning-Kruger», resulta relevante para conocer hasta qué punto la autoevaluación de estas tres dimensiones por parte de aprendientes de español se corresponde con la evaluación de los interlocutores nativos con los que ellos interactúan habitualmente dentro y fuera del aula. Los resultados muestran que, efectivamente, los hablantes con peor desempeño se sobrevaloran y los que fueron mejor valorados se infravaloran, aunque la experiencia de los jueces resulta relevante a la hora de marcar la significatividad estadística de las diferencias y los tamaños del efecto.

Interpreting scholars claim that mind mapping can be used pedagogically to enhance trainees’ interpreting-specific listening skills. However, so far relevant empirical studies have been rare. A single-group post and retrospective self-assessment design was used to examine student interpreters’ attitudes towards the use of mind mapping in teaching listening for interpreting and its effectiveness. Eighty-two students were involved as participants. An instruction experience questionnaire was administered at the end of the pedagogical intervention to examine their attitudes towards the mind mapping exercise. Two self-assessments of knowledge and skills were conducted at the end of the pedagogical intervention to investigate their pre-test post-test gains. One was a retrospective self-assessment about their competence before the exercise (then self-assessment) and the other was a post self-assessment about their competence after the exercise (now self-assessment). The results indicate that the participants perceived mind mapping as a positive learning experience and that it was effective in developing students’ interpreting-specific listening knowledge and skills.

This study investigates the written production of direct object (DO) anaphora in L2 Spanish by adult English native speakers. It focuses on the use of clitics and full DPs in topic continuity, where highly salient topics are typically recovered by clitics in native Spanish. A combination of pragmatic factors in subject anaphora resolution (referential ambiguity and distance) and morphosyntactic factors in the acquisition of clitics (gender and animacy) was analyzed in 5 subcorpora from the CEDEL2 (Corpus Escrito del Español L2). Following Learner Corpus Research methodology, 773 anaphoric DOs and their antecedents were tagged across 150 texts (from low-intermediate to upper-advanced proficiency). Results showed that as learner proficiency increases, the predominant anaphoric strategy shifts from redundant DP overuse to felicitous pronominalization. Clitic avoidance is the general strategy intimately related to clitics’ morphosyntactic deficits at advanced levels, but also to pragmatic principles supporting the Pragmatic Principles Violation Hypothesis ( Lozano, 2016 ).