Emily Hellmich, Assistant Professor, French and Second Language Acquisition/Teaching, University of Arizona
Kimberly Vinall, Professor, Spanish, De Anza College
“Machine Translation is a lot like Booze”: Language Instructors’ Beliefs about Machine Translation
Whether we like it or not, foreign language teaching and learning is implicated in the increased popularity and sophistication of machine translation platforms (e.g., GoogleTranslate). With this in mind, we set out to explore university language instructors’ beliefs about these tools in order to consider how MT is shaping language learning/teaching as well as the foreign language profession at educational institutions across the United States. Drawing from quantitative and qualitative data from a national survey (n=165) and in-depth interviews (n=11), we present our preliminary findings through the lens of the metaphors that instructors use to make meaning of these complex relationships. More specifically, we consider what these metaphors reveal about instructors’ identities, constructions of students’ identities, understandings of language and language learning, and the perceived role of technology in our globalized world.
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Friday, February 7, 2020
3 – 5 pm
B-4 Dwinelle Hall