New Approaches to Teaching English and Translation in the Era of Internet

Abstract

The article is the summary of a year-long work with 3d year students of philological specialties during Business English Translation Classes in the era of the rapid development of Internet technologies. It points out the necessity to accord time conditions with the development of new methods of teaching English and Translation which have to include authentic text and audio-visual material from the Internet. Particularly, it describes in detail the methods of working with excerpts from the electronic Guardian article and the Youtube documentary, both dealing with such a topical issue as ‘consumerism’. There is also a table of students’ assessments of classical methods of teaching translation, and modern ones based on the work with digital technologies. It is important that students gave a high assessment both to the work with authentic English articles and audio-visual materials, and traditional language and translation exercises, such as the work with text-books. This makes us conclude that modern students still need systematic basic knowledge, just like the previous generations of young people; that it is necessary to create a fundamental theoretical basis for combining classical methods of teaching languages and translation with the use of a great deal of practical authentic material offered by the Internet.

Keywords: Internet technologies, authentic text and audio-visual material, challenging classes, classical methods of teaching, systematic knowledge, professional use of English.