Teaching foreign languages through audiovisual translation resources: teachers’ perspectives

In the past decade, techniques traditionally used in the audiovisual translation (AVT) industry have been applied to teaching foreign languages (FL) with promising results. Both teachers and researchers have provided useful data on various AVT typologies (i.e. subtitling, dubbing, audio description) in order to improve specific learning areas: vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, pronunciation, intercultural awareness, etc. (Ibáñez & Vermeulen, 2014; Baños & Sokoli, 2015). The following study aims to provide information in two relevant areas identified in the field: (1) the direct experience of those teachers who have been using AVT techniques in the classroom in recent years, and (2) their perspectives on in the combination of FL and AVT in the future. A total of 56 respondents from Europe, the USA and Asia participated in the study, these being teachers of French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Catalan as an FL. The results obtained are applicable to different languages and useful to any professional interested in using AVT in their classroom or carrying out further research.