A study on the characteristics of translation classes in Korean language education: focusing on the teachers’ backgrounds.

This study explores aspects of the ‘Translation in Korean Teaching’ (TIKT) class in which there is a convergence between Korean language teaching and professional translation and interpreting teaching. As the TIKT classes are taught by teachers with Korean language or professional translation and interpreting backgrounds, we interviewed eight teachers to look into their teaching practices in the TIKT class, conducting in-depth and keyword analyses. In the analysis of the interviews, we examined various aspects such as class goals, class activities, teachers and learners’ roles, and identified some differences among the groups in terms of their strategies to achieve teaching goals, organizations of teaching content and procedures, and specific teaching techniques. First, TIKT teachers followed Korean language teaching procedures but adopted professional translation and interpreting teaching techniques. Second, the keyword analysis of the interviews revealed the teachers employed different learning reinforcement strategies in their classes reflecting their educational and professional backgrounds. The results of the study are meaningful in that they reveal how TIKT classes are implemented by the teachers with different educational and professional backgrounds, thereby providing some clues as to how to further rationalize its teaching in the future.