Improving language skills through e-learning trainingan experience from the field of interpreting

Resumen

The demand for professional interlocutors is growing in our increasingly multicultural Western societies. As an answer to this demand, the university of Alcalá offers a training programs on intercultural communication and public service interpreting and translating (PSI&T) since 2000, in different language pairs (Spanish and Arabic, Bulgarian, English, French, Romanian, Russian and other minority languages). Since 2003 an online course on intercultural communication has been offered, and in 2006 a new on line course on medical interpreting was developed as part of the Masters on Intercultural Communication and PSI&T. In this article I will concentrate on this last experience, which has been highly rewarding for both students and instructors, and in the English-Spanish language combination. I will briefly introduce the course, reflect on our experience of teaching interpreting online, and provide some tips for successful e-learning training as well as some results from the students' exercises. Due to time and topic restrictions, I will only concentrate on some linguistic aspects inherent when learning a second language (in this case English-Spanish), leaving the interpreting skills for a future occasion. The on line interpreting experience has revealed to be a good strategy to improve language competence and fluency as well as to provide elements to develop remedial work for the students' deficiencies in listening and speaking skills.