Abstract:

Practitioners in Higher Education environment are supposed to reflect on their ways of teaching and to make improvements through continued professional development. This paper centres around the empirical study on how to deliver an interactive, engaging and independent learning experience to translation and interpreting students at universities. I examined the way of teaching for interpreting classes which were highly practice-based and were supposed to be highly interactive and engaging so that students would have a practical, effective and satisfying experience. The traditional way of delivering the classes was for students to read a text or listen to a speech and interpret and the lecturer to correct them afterwards. However, according to the data collected via Module Feedback, the conventional teaching method seemed to be monotonous and passive. In order to achieve teaching excellence and to improve learning and teaching quality, pedagogical literature on interactive, engaging, small-group, participatory (active) teaching and deep learning methods were referred to and a more systematic approach to promoting active learning in the classroom by incorporating Auster and Wylie’s (2006) four active-teaching dimensions including context setting, class preparation, class delivery and continuous improvement was devised, implemented and feedbacked on. Small group teaching, thorough class preparation, class demonstration, peer assessment, practice and teaching others, group discussions and role-plays were combined to facilitate a more active, more independent, more diversified and more engaging learning experience. The most recent Module feedback showed that students were very satisfied with the improved teaching methods and had become independent learners themselves.

Keywords:

Small group teaching, participatory teaching, deep learning, independent learning.