A Cognitive Psychological Study On Comprehension Barriers In Consecutive Interpreting

Listening comprehension is the first and foremost step during consecutive interpreting(CI). Its quality has a direct bearing on the entire interpreting performance, thus there is nointerpreting without listening comprehension. However, different from common listeningcomprehension in foreign language training, listening comprehension in CI is morecomplicated and changeable. To fully convey the speakers’ idea, the interpreters must focuson meaning acquisition and go further to the higher sentential and discourse levels, inaddition to the surface-level linguistic structure. Also, the interpreters may encountervarious working environment and English variants in the actual CI practices which maylead to more comprehension barriers. Thus, in order to get a full picture of various listeningcomprehension barriers during CI and explore some effective ways to minimize theirnegative impacts, this paper, based on information-processing theory of cognitivepsychology, discusses the comprehension barriers from the perspectives of both theinternal and external factors. Besides the theoretical illustration, the author also conductsan empirical study to see the negative influences of these two factors and accordingly triesto develop some tentative strategies for their mitigation.Altogether, this paper is divided into six chapters.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the research questions, the researchsignificance, the research status and the outline of the present paper.Chapter Two discusses the process of listening comprehension during CI and threeinformation-processing models based on cognitive psychology–bottom-up, top-down andschema models.Chapter Three focuses on the internal factors which may cause listeningcomprehension barriers during CI, including their linguistic knowledge, extra-linguisticknowledge and psychological factors.Chapter Four mainly talks about the external factors which are out of the interpreters’control, including the source text type, the speakers’ delivery and the workingenvironment.Chapter Five explores the impact of both the internal and external factors on listening comprehension during CI through an empirical study. With the result analysis, the authortries to develop some tentative strategies such as listening practice, sufficient preparation inadvance and anticipation.Chapter Six concludes the major findings of the paper, illustrate its limitation and putforward suggestions for further study.