The Skill-Focused Approach to Interpretation Teaching: An Empirical Exploration

Xu Han

School of Foreign Languages, Nanchang Hangkong University, Nanchang, China.

DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2013.32022                

Abstract

This paper conducts an empirical study to testify the necessity and feasibility of the skill-focused interpretation teaching for undergraduate English majors, aiming at probing into the issue of accurate positioning of interpretation course. The participants in the experiment are 72 fourth-year students with 36 in the experimental class and 36 in the control class. The pedagogical principles and procedures between the experimental class and control class are rather different. The former follows the language-focused approach while the latter implements the skill-focused one. Results indicate that the mean of experimental class (77.69) is higher than that of the control class (72.48) in the post-test, and there is significant difference between them (p = .000). On the whole, experimental class produces better overall interpreting performance than control class, especially in terms of completeness, accuracy, re-expression, and adaptability. There are significant differences between all of them (p < .05). Empirical evidence shows that the skill-focused approach has its advantages over the traditional language-focused approach.

Keywords

Interpretation Teaching; Shill-Focused Approach; Empirical Study

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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