Autonomous learning in teaching translation: a comparative study between conventional teaching and autonomous learning

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate whether following the autonomous learning approach in teaching translation gives better results than the conventional method in the development of translation skills, and the promotion of a positive attitude towards this method of the students in the commercial translation course at the College of Languages and Translation at King Saud University. The four main aspects tested in this study were; (1) lexical accuracy, (2) structural accuracy, (3) the overall accuracy of the students‟ translation, and (4) their attitude towards autonomous learning. The subjects of the study were sixty-seven female students at level eight attending the commercial translation course, and were divided into a control group (33 students) taught following the conventional method, and an experimental group (34 students) taught following the autonomous learning method. They were required to take a pretest before the experiment, and two post-tests after it to measure performance differences, and the experimental group only had to complete a questionnaire and an interview at the end to measure their attitude towards this method. The finding showed that there was no significant difference between the scores of the two groups in the lexical and structural accuracy, but the experimental group outperformed the control group in the overall accuracy at a 0.04 level. In addition, the study found that the subjects had a positive attitude towards autonomous learning.