Enhancing Students’ Motivation through Vocabulary Learning: from Corpora Theory to ESP Classrooms Practice

Recent ESP research has favoured vocabulary-based investigation (Fortanet-Gomez & Räisänen 2008) leading to new interest in corpus linguistics applied to language teaching. Corpora studies allow the determination of learning priorities in a specific sector, according to frequency and use (McCarten 2007). ESP also commonly reveals problems of teacher disciplinary knowledge, lack of pedagogical resources, heterogeneous classes and learner motivation. In this study, we ask whether translation can offer a useful solution. Translation is generally considered "part of more general teaching methodologies, mostly as a check on what has been acquired, sometimes as an exploration of the differences between language systems" (Pym & Malmkjaer 2013). In this study, we ask whether corpus-informed translation activities can also improve student motivation in terms of the L2 ideal self as described in Self-determination Theory (Dörnyei 2009). In this study, we propose a multimodal corpus based on a contrastive analysis of specialised English and Italian vocabulary as the basis for ESP translation activities. In the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Catania, we created a corpus to foster classroom translation activities in degree courses, by collecting traditional academic texts in the main sectors of educational sciences (e.g., psychology, didactics), as well as podcasts, TEDX speeches, and movies. Participants include first and third-year students in degree courses in Psychology, 63 Tourism, and Educational Science and data were collected via questionnaires and interviews. Preliminary findings indicate a slight improvement in students’ learning even over a short timespan, accompanied by other changes in terms of motivation.