| This research is a case study in the genre of teacher research using qualitative approaches to determine the nature of the experience of teaching and learning in an innovative course, a non-language-specific interpreter training (NIT) program. In an NIT program, the instructor and students do not share all the working languages, and students come from diverse interpretation and language backgrounds. Based on the decomposition model and current interpreter-training research, the researcher designed an NIT program, implemented the program at a community college in the southwestern United States, and investigated the class he taught in the fall semester of 1998. Participants included one Korean, two Japanese, and seven English/Spanish bilingual students. English was the common working language in the course. A well-qualified interpreter and academic scholar supervised as a participant-observer, taking part in classroom activities and interacting with students.;Using information gathered from the researcher's NIT program, lesson plans, observation and reflective notes; the supervisor's observation notes and interviews; student interviews and classroom oral and written output, the study focused on delineating the researcher's experience of learning how to design and teach the course as well as the students' experiences of learning how to interpret. Student achievement levels were determined by using interpreter-training task checklists and interpretation quality checklists developed by the researcher and based on previous research. The analysis was concentrated primarily on five main factors: the characteristics of the learners, the learning activities, the nature of the materials to be learned, the tasks used for testing, and the factors unique to NIT.;This study identified the advantages and disadvantages of the NIT program, established effective strategies for both the instructor and the learners, explored teacher-research methods for future investigation of the NIT approach, and allowed the researcher to become a better NIT designer and teacher. The data strongly suggested that the training program, training tasks, training concepts, monitoring and assessment techniques, and equipment used and developed in this study enhanced the effectiveness of interpreter training and motivated students to learn interpreting. The study also made possible the establishment of an NIT model for a community college in the southwestern United States. |
