Constructivism and cooperative learning: An application in teaching interpreting to senior students of business english at the university of finance – marketing

CONSTRUCTIVISM AND COOPERATIVE LEARNING: 
AN APPLICATION IN TEACHING INTERPRETING 
TO SENIOR STUDENTS OF BUSINESS ENGLISH 
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF FINANCE–MARKETING 
Chu Quang Phe
*
University of Finance-Marketing 
Received: 27/06/2017; Revised: 20/07/2017; Accepted: 30/08/2018 
Abstract: The paper discusses the application of constructivism to teaching interpreting to senior 
students of Business English at the University of Finance-Marketing’s Foreign Language Department. 
In fact, the author depicts the classroom model, in which the constructivist approach in combination 
with cooperative learning is adopted in two empirical courses. The participant observation and 
questionnaire reveal that the students are really interested in and inspired by the constructivist approach 
to teaching interpreting at tertiary level, and the factor analysis of material preference, language 
proficiency, confidence, methods and the teacher through data statistics indicates that the students like 
and support the empirical courses, and the teacher is the most influential on students’ learning and the 
most satisfying factor. 
Key words: Constructivism, cooperative learning, cognitive development, language proficiency 
1. Introduction 
Translation is “rendering the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the author intended 
the text” (Newmark, 1988, p. 5), and there would be no global communication without it (Newmark, 2003, cited 
in Nguyen Thi Nhu Ngoc, Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu & Le Thi Ngoc Anh, 2016). Since Vietnam’s open-door policy, 
there has been a mounting demand for translating and interpreting due largely to its increasing economic, 
diplomatic and commercial relations with other countries. Then, translating and interpreting, which play a part 
in foreign language teaching and learning, especially at universities, colleges, academies and institutes (higher 
education institutions or HEIs), where students study to earn a degree in linguistics or applied linguistics, become 
more and more popular on the employment market and have been pursued by many as their life-long careers 
after graduation. Currently, about sixty HEIs are training translating and interpreting, either as a discipline or as 
a major, and the importance and popularity of this profession actually led to the official establishment of Vietnam 
Translator and Interpreter Group in 2015, in a hope to improve expertise and business in the field, and help 
increase training, teaching, assessing and accrediting trainees in the future (Nguyen Thi Nhu Ngoc et al., 2016). 
Interpreting is “to translate one language into another as you hear it”, (Oxford Advanced Learner's 
Dictionary) or “oral translation” (Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, 2016). This skill has long been taught in Vietnam 
either in combination with or in separation from translating; nonetheless, it has gained much attention for 
two decades now at HEIs which teach foreign languages with the foundation of faculty departments of 
translating and interpreting (Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, 2016). Although there have been numerous forums, 
workshops, and conferences, either online or offline on interpreting, researchers and lecturers still find it 
hard to spot the best approaches and methodologies on teaching, training, and assessing interpreting in 
Vietnam. 
* Email: cq.phe@ufm.edu.vn 
At the University of Finance-Marketing (UFM), Foreign Language Department (FLD) started 
training Business English majored students in 1998. Based on the curriculum of Business English for 
undergraduates at the UFM’s FLD, interpreting is offered separately from translating and is instructed in 
two consecutive courses, namely Interpreting 1 and Interpreting 2. Though formally constructed, the syllabi 
are still problematic as they fail to depict the methodology, the teaching perspectives and the relevant 
theories that guide the practices. Rather, they just focus themselves much on interpreting skill training and 
mention some topics under which the materials are adopted for practice in class; thus, the materials are 
varied and current. In fact, without the official course books concerned with the relevant theories, these 
courses often go more practical than academic. This is quite challenging for lecturers because each may 
implement the syllabi in a different way. 
The practice also reveals that teaching interpreting as well as translating at the UFM’s FLD is 
product-driven. Trainee students are very often given a source text and some time to prepare their 
performance individually or collaboratively. They, indeed, work individually for most of the time in the 
classroom; little discussion, little cooperation, and little criticism have been observed. The trainee students’ 
performance is ‘everything” that shows their competence, for the assessment of their work is based mainly 
on their presented product in class. This means failing to keep track of students’ thou ... all that they reveal during the empirical work and through the survey questionnaire will be 
analyzed and reported in detail in Section 3 of this paper. 
4. Data analysis and discussion 
4.1. Trainee students’ attitude and interest 
Figure 1 provides the information on the students’ choice of materials, categorized under certain 
topics. For the past 6 weeks, 54 source texts have been submitted for the practice. All of them are in English, 
and most of them are very current. As is seen in Figure 1, business news including economics, tourism, 
trade, and catering account for the majority of the chart, totaling 66%. Next come political news with 15% 
and education and health make up 9% each. Last are literature and agriculture which represent 6% and 4% 
respectively. Although the materials are for the trainee interpreters to pick up, their preference of genres 
reflects their major in Business English as they are interested in business news. This trend really coincides 
with their preference of the previous internship choice among 294 senior students of Business English from 
2015 to 2017 as shown in Figure 2, which shows the dominance of 92% representing the intern’s choice of 
management, marketing, tourism and foreign trade as their prospective careers. 
Figure 1. Students' choice of materials 
Trainee students are really interested in the performance in the production stage, where they are keen 
on listening and proactive in raising questions for the trainee interpreters to show their interpreting 
competence. During the practice stage, cooperative learning keeps them busy with discussion, suggestions 
and negotiation. This makes the class atmosphere a lot more exciting and inspiring. 
Concerning the trainee interpreters’ confidence, they show less uncertainty in word choice and better 
use of voice and intonation as they have much time to cooperatively work on the source texts they have 
chosen by themselves. Thanks to that, the level of proficiency has been improved through the time. 
In short, interpreting is often considered as hard, and students were normally not fond of this course. 
The truth is that very few students chose their internship in this field (see Figure 2); therefore, the empirical 
work has been rewarding for him. 
 Figure 2. Students' internship fields in 2015 to 2017 
4.2. Trainee students’ perception 
Table 2 shows the trainee students’ perception and expectation of the new approach to teaching 
interpreting at the UFM’s FLD. The information is categorized into five groups, namely material choice, 
language proficiency, confidence, methods and the teacher; and these factors are highly believed to affect 
the student subjects’ satisfaction and expectation in class. Generally speaking, they are satisfied with all the 
previously mentioned factors because the mean ranges of almost all responses reach 3.41 or higher. 
Furthermore, since the standard deviation and the variance are less than or equal to ±1, the data quite 
condenses toward their means, indicating that the respondents filled out the questionnaire consciously. In a 
nutshell, these figures are the initial signs to prove that the empirical work is quite successful. 
Table 2. Statistical figures on students' perception of the empirical work 
Item 
Mean 
Std. 
Dev. 
Vari
ance Skewness Kurtosis 
Stat. Stat. Stat. Stat. 
Std. 
Err. Stat. 
Std. 
Err. 
M1. You have the autonomy to choose the source text. 3.56 .906 .820 -.788 .261 .844 .517 
M2. You can discuss and suggest the type of source 
texts with your mates. 
3.85 .838 .703 -.572 .261 -.007 .517 
M3. You have good access to various source texts. 3.60 .862 .743 -.260 .261 -.514 .517 
M4. Your group’s source texts are important for you 
and your future job. 
3.51 .766 .586 .143 .261 -.314 .517 
M5. You like your group’s source text for interpretation. 3.66 .733 .537 -.107 .261 -.200 .517 
L1. You have an opportunity to maintain 
conversational English. 
3.73 .662 .438 -.146 .261 .001 .517 
L2. You have a chance to discuss the terminologies 
in English. 
3.61 .638 .407 -.855 .261 .431 .517 
L3. You are often critical of your peers’ translation. 3.33 .878 .771 -.379 .261 -.045 .517 
L4. Cooperation helps you study interpreting better. 4.22 .643 .414 -.241 .261 -.640 .517 
L5. Cooperation help improve fluency in interpreting. 4.05 .706 .498 -.275 .261 -.275 .517 
C1. Group discussion helps broaden your knowledge. 4.25 .671 .450 -.335 .261 -.773 .517 
C2. Group discussion makes you more confident in 
presentations later. 
4.12 .747 .557 -.371 .261 -.557 .517 
C3. Group discussion is helpful for interpreting. 4.13 .686 .471 -.171 .261 -.843 .517 
C4. You like cooperative learning. 3.98 .690 .476 -.861 .261 3.08 .517 
C5. You will adopt this type of learning to study at 
university. 
3.92 .676 .457 .100 .261 -.772 .517 
Me1. You have much guidance on studying interpreting. 3.66 .682 .466 -.368 .261 .160 .517 
Me2. You are permitted to explore theories before 
practicing in class. 
3.98 .756 .571 -.639 .261 .567 .517 
Me3. You can apply what you have learnt to 
practicing interpreting skills. 
3.75 .785 .617 -.738 .261 1.21 .517 
Me4. You find the theories helpful for practicing 
interpreting. 
3.79 .742 .550 -.534 .261 .370 .517 
T1. Your present teacher of Interpreting 2 is 
knowledgeable in teaching interpreting. 
4.15 .588 .345 -.397 .261 1.49 .517 
T2. He is helpful and caring. 4.24 .570 .325 -.420 .261 1.81 .517 
T3. He knows good ways to help you improve 
interpreting skills. 
4.19 .627 .393 -.456 .261 .853 .517 
G1. You find the current approach to teaching 
interpreting more effective than that in Interpreting 1. 
4.31 .740 .548 -.742 .261 -.148 .517 
G2. You like the current approach to interpreting. 4.18 .710 .504 -.473 .261 -.152 .517 
More specifically, the items marked as M1 - M5 are concerned with the choice of materials for 
practice in class, and it is exciting to know that the means of these items are above the agreement level of 
3.41. However, though students agree with all the statements, the statistics figure out that they are not 
completely satisfied with the source texts chosen by their peers. This is because they are grouped on the 
basis of convenience, not of interest; thus, each member follows a different interest and need, and they 
hardly agree to one and the same topic. In addition, because the Skewness and the Kurtosis are negative 
(except M4), the data spreads further to the left of the mean and the data distribution is quite flat 
accordingly. 
The items marked as L1-L5 center on the student subjects’ language proficiency in the practice and 
production stages. Except for the response to L3, which bears the mean below the agreement level (3.33), 
the remainder is with high levels of rating, showing that the student subjects are satisfied with their practice 
and believe that cooperation in learning can improve their language skills. Additionally, the Skewness 
(except L2) shows that the data spread to both sides of but close to the means. Overall, although the student 
subjects are not really critical of their peers’ interpreting, the statistics point out that cooperation is helpful 
for their learning. 
For the items marked as C1-C5 in Table 2, the means of the ratings are quite high, showing that the 
student subjects agree with all the claimed statements in the questionnaire. However, the Skewness shows that 
most of the data (except C5) spreads to the left side of the means. However, in C4, the Kurtosis peaks 3.08, 
showing that the data distribution is sharply high to the right of the means, while the rest fall quite flat. In 
short, the student subjects are satisfied with the cooperation to improve their confidence. This finding concurs 
with the less uncertainty of vocabulary choice and better use of voice and intonation mentioned in Section 
3.1. 
The items coded as Me1-Me4 focus on the methods of teaching in class. The responses of this factor 
well reach the level of agreement. While the Skewness indicates that the data spreads more to the left of the 
means, the Kurtosis shows that the condensed data reaches the considerable height to the right of the mean, 
especially for Me3 whose Kurtosis tops at 1.21. In fact, the standard deviation and the variance of Me3 are 
higher than those of the other items, revealing that the students are a little diverse in applying the theory 
into real life. This is true because the skills of memory, visualization and not-taking need improving through 
the time. They cannot be formed in one day; the students find it hard to master them. 
The teacher is the last factor that needs analyzing; however, it is interesting to see that this factor is 
with the highest ratings, revealing that the students are satisfied with the teacher most. Because the means 
are quite high, the Skewness is negative and falls far to the left in all the items, and the Kurtosis indicates 
some sharp heights of the data distribution in T2 and T1 that hit 1.81 and 1.49, centering to the right of the 
means respectively. In general, the statistics show that the teacher is the most satisfying in the class room; 
thus, he is the most influential and inspiring factor of the five ones mentioned above. 
The last two items marked G1 and G2 in Table 2 help the student subjects confirm the use of the 
constructivist approach to learning interpreting, and the responses are quite positive, especially G1, which 
affirms that the current approach is more effective than the previous one in Interpreting 1. This, moreover, reveals 
that the approach should be applied on a much larger basis. To understand more about this, the author decides 
on doing the cross table statistics provided in Table 3 below. 
Table 3. Correlation between score and like of the constructivist approach 
You like the current 
approach to interpreting. 
Total 2 3 4 5 
Your score of 
Interpreting 1 
5 to below 7 1 7 18 15 41 
7 to 8 0 5 23 13 41 
above 8 0 0 2 1 3 
Total 1 12 43 29 85 
Table 3 shows that only one of the student subjects disagrees with the approach, and twelve others 
hold their neutral stance; meanwhile, the rest (making up about 85%) support and like it. Also seen in Table 
3, the higher score the supporters get, the more they like the approach, indicating that better students prefer 
it. 
On the whole, the observation and the questionnaire help uncover some myth related to the newly 
applied approach to teaching interpreting, and the findings show that the empirical work is quite successful. 
The student subjects give the high rakings to show their complete agreement in the benefit of cooperation 
in learning interpreting (L4), group discussion in broadening knowledge (C1), the teacher’s help and care 
(T2) and the effectiveness of the newly applied approach to interpreting (G1). 
5. Conclusion 
The students’ experiences in and perception of the application of constructivism and cooperative learning 
in Interpreting 2 have been described, analyzed and reported in the paper. The results of the six-week-long 
empirical courses have proven some initial success, and students show much interest in studying interpreting. 
The observation shows that the students are keen on learning interpreting when experiencing the new approach. 
The factor analysis of material choice, language proficiency, confidence, methods and the teacher get high 
rankings, asserting that the student subjects are satisfied with the new approach. The data gathered in the 
questionnaire, in addition, reveals that they like the approach, and they want it to be applied more. Therefore, it 
is highly expected that teaching and learning interpreting at HEIs should be based on this approach. 
Apart from the positive results mentioned above, there are some disadvantages that need addressing 
to get better success. Firstly, when grouped, the students should be advised to choose the peers on the basis 
of needs and interest. This will help them choose materials much more easily and appropriately. Secondly, 
although there are criteria for choosing the proper texts for practice, students still tend to pick the one which 
is less challenging or to simplify the text to make it much easier. Thirdly, each group often chooses one 
text, and the members only focus on practicing it. Fourthly, the new approach should be combined with 
technology because everyone is now working with information technology tools; thus, teaching them to 
master IT tools should be a must at tertiary level. Finally, students should take better advantage of 
cooperative learning as after-school assignments because they have more time at home, and they can group 
to improve their skills much better. 
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