4. Questionnaires

This activity allows instructors to design questionnaires with closed or open responses. Normally, instructors believe that they can use this activity only for testing knowledge acquisition. But it can also be useful for increasing language skills. So choosing the option "short answers" (open responses) one of the exercises we can think of is to revise text chunks of a faulty translation by comparing it with a source text. The chunks can be contiguous parts of one text, but they would be presented more or less like the working interface of a translation memory. Therefore, the errors have to be clearly identified as linguistic and/or cultural ones, and a collection of model solutions for each sentence or paragraph has to be offered. The difficulty of the exercise can be increased by emphasizing stylistic aspects or grammar aspects studied in high level-courses. As learners can be given the chance to make several attempts, this type of exercise is suitable for self-training. Besides a general point system which assesses the learner after successfully finishing the exercise, there will be automatic feedback on the performance in each presented text unit. The possibility of an automatic comparison between wrong learner solutions and model solutions should also be given. In the case of a bad performance, the checking the related grammar topics in referred bibliography or supplied additional texts will be suggested. In addition, learners will be given the chance to repeat parts of the units. A variant of this exercise could be proposing various alternative translations of which learners have to select the version they deem the best. In this case, the skill focused on is the critical view of correcting and revising target texts.

All these proposed activities can also be developed under time limits by configuring the settings, having learners trained in dealing with stress and working under time pressure.

The skills trained directly with the propose method made would be a), b), e), f) and i).

Chat. Chat is a synchronous tool by which communication among people can take place while they are at different places. Normally, it is used like a virtual forum, but since it permits conversations of the participants to be saved, it can have quite a different use.

So teams of not more than five learners translate a short text, but each member communicates with the rest of the group through the chat utility and explains why he or she would make this translation decision, and no other, and suggest how to research or look up terminology and where. In this way, learners are forced to think carefully about and become aware of the different steps of the translation process. Besides, instructors can observe translation as a process and examine it closely, although the result will be distorted up to a certain point, as learners will not have the same level of spontaneity as in a conventional translation process. Instructors will not be "big brothers", and as to legal limitations, learners have to know before beginning the exercise that their chat conversations will be recorded. A variant of this exercise could be the participation of the instructor in order to give feedback or a new idea. Exploitation of this approach has already been initiated by researchers like Neunzig. Exercises like the one proposed emphasize collaborative learning and construction of knowledge, but they also make the students see the translation process as a series of problem-solving and decision-making steps. So, skills c, d), and i) are directly trained.

Wiki. Wikis are shared workspaces similar to web pages where several people can write and rewrite the same text. The wiki-concept is already widely known through Wikipedia which is the online encyclopedia, a project driven by Jimmy Wales. Its text is open and multilingual and is constructed in a collaborative way by any person interested in contributing. As Wikipedia started only in 2003, the incredible increase of articles proves its success. The feature of this tool is that old versions of a wiki are stored and can be restored if wanted. We can have a blended use of wiki with chat in a project where a specialist in the use of new technologies in translator training: learner groups of two or four members, each one consisting of one-to-one or two-to-two learners, they were supposed to discuss translation solutions and to solve problems through chat communication, then they had to write down the subsequent variants on the wiki. This way the instructors could afterwards track the translation processes of each team, which was very interesting for research on problem solving in translation. Wiki and chat worked as complementary information tools. In order to make learners aware of the features of the translation process as a whole, and their own process in particular, they could read afterwards not only the wikis and chat debates they had taken part in, but also the ones of their companions.

Another way to use wiki in translation classes is as an e-portfolio. The portfolio is a resource frequently mentioned nowadays. Because of its utility as an assessment tool for instructors and self-assessment for learners it is more and more employed in the teaching-learning process. This digital resource gives samples of the personal development in a set area like the gradual achievement of one or several learning goals, as an assessment tool, as a curriculum vitae, and much more. The advantage of wiki is that learners can easily attach documents of all format types (not only text files, but also sound, picture and video files, etc.) from their work during the course or at home which fit in with the goals of the course. These documents are briefly commented on in order to get to know the relevance they want them to have. This way, learners can select what they want to be assessed, choosing what they consider the best sample of their work, their most favorable side. An example could be a wiki with the learners' best translations, best terminological and research work and their self-assessments, all of them commented. Instructors can demand publishable and printable translations according to professional quality criteria (saved in set format models, using translation memories, etc.).

The portfolio has several advantages: learners become more self-confident and motivated as they observe their progress and capacity for good performance, but also the instructors' assessment task becomes easier to fulfill and even also to justify if a student's best work does not reach the goal. At the same time, learners become familiar with an instrument they can use to reflect their lifelong learning evolution.

With the uses of wiki we focussed on skills c), d), f) and i), although, in short, the portfolio use can cover them all.