Innovation in Language Learning

At our institution we run a suite of Academic Reading courses for PhD students of the schools of Arts and Humanities and Humanities and Social Sciences. The aim of these courses is to give students acces to secondary literature in the target language. Since these are post/graduate students engaged in research they do not have a unified reading list. We teach therefore, the transferable skill of reading rather than specific authors and texts.
Discussing the teaching approach to these courses with colleagues, I noticed that some claim to be teaching translation or that, at least, are using an approach, methods and techniques used in teaching translation.
The British translation studies scholar Clive Scott asserts that ‘translations are normally understood as the translation of a source text (ST) into the target text (TT) […] for the benefit of those readers who have no access to the ST’. Translation Studies therefore, acknowledge the presence of a source-text (ST) and a target-text (TT). The first, source text is the ‘original’ and the second, target text is the ‘translation.’
In this presentation I will challange the notion that the teaching of Academic Reading requires the presence of a ‘target-text’. I will conclude that Academic Reading is a teaching practice distinct from the teaching of translation.

Keywords: teaching approach; translation;