ABSTRACT
This article compares the social representations about the processes of teaching and learning a foreign language held by first- and fifth-year students of the translation studies undergraduate programme at Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH). The concept of social representations is taken from social psychology (Jodelet 1988JODELET, Denise. 1988. La representación social: fenómenos, conceptos y teoría. En: Sege Moscovici. Ed. Psicología social II. Pensamiento y vida social, Barcelona: Paidós, p. 469-494., 2008JODELET, Denise. 2008. El movimiento de retorno al sujeto y el enfoque de las representaciones sociales. Cultura y representaciones sociales, 5, p. 32-63.; Moscovici 1979MOSCOVICI, Serge. 1979. El psicoanálisis, su imagen y su público. Buenos Aires: Huemul.).A word association task and a semi structured interview were administered to four groups of translator trainees. Results show significant changes in terms of language proficiency, teaching and learning. It is concluded that such changes would promote the adoption of new methodologies for the foreign language course units in this translation programme.
Keywords:
social representations; translation studies; second language teaching; translator education
