Documentation in specialised contexts A quasi-experimental corpus-based study in public service interpreting and translation studies

Existing training programmes in the field of public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) do not to focus on how best to develop students' lexical competence and corpora-based search skills. This paper reports the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel corpus-based module intended to develop Spanish postgraduate PSIT students' lexical competence and search strategies. Adopting a mixed-methods quasi-experimental design, we administered a pre- and post-test to both an experimental group and a control group to collect quantitative data and determine whether the corpus-based module contributes to improving participants' lexical competence and search strategies. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted to collect qualitative data, which were thematically analysed. The findings indicate that a corpus-based methodology significantly improves PSIT students' skills in these areas, leading to the conclusion that such an approach should be adopted more widely in PSIT pedagogy.