Enlightenment Of Schema Theory To The Teaching Of Listening In Interpretation Training

The history of interpretation as a formal profession can be traced back to theParis Peace Conference in1919. With the deepening of international communication,interpretation has been widely accepted as an effective way of promotingcommunication and understanding. The need for professional interpreters from allwalks of life is getting larger and larger. Interpretation specialty andinterpretation-related courses have been offered in many universities and colleges,which contributed to the turning out of lots of professional interpreters. However, wecan also find many shortcomings in the practice of interpretation training. Comparedwith written translation, interpretation has received much less attention in terms ofstudy on its training methods.The present thesis focuses on the first step in the process of interpretationtraining—listening comprehension. The ability of listening comprehension directlyinfluences the comprehension quality of source language. Hence, it is key to theprocess of interpretation. Schema theory lays a theoretical foundation for listeningprediction and decoding process. The theory claims that background knowledge playsa significant role in listening comprehension process which is an interactive processbetween listeners’ linguistic knowledge, social knowledge, cultural backgroundinformation, upcoming knowledge and common sense. The knowledge structure thelisteners previously acquired is called schema. Linguistic schema, content schema andformal schema are thought to be the three types of schematic knowledge. Thelistening comprehension process is an interactive model including bottom-up andtop-down models. According to this model, the listening comprehension process is aninteractive process of listeners’ background knowledge and the listening materials.Listeners have to store both correct and adequate schemata in order to realise a successful listening comprehension and interpretation process. The activation ofschemata determines how much and how accurate the listener understands thelistening materials and is the key to a successful comprehension and interpretationprocess.Two experiments are conducted with the focus of schema activation. During theexperiment, the listening activities which aim to activate the schema before listening,instantiate the schema while listening and interpreting activities as well as consolidatethe schema after listening are conducted. The results prove that activating the schemacould turn the passive listeners to active ones, abundant background knowledge andutilization of listening strategies could effectively improve the listeningcomprehension as well as the interpreting performance. The teaching model based onschema theory could facilitate the students’ listening ability in reciprocal listening.These teaching activities which aim to activate schema, whether the activated schemais relevant or augmented, will raise the efficiency of listening comprehension.Specific types of schema should be activated according to different listening materials,interpreting requirements and different students.Based on the theory and experiment, some discussions on the teaching process oflistening comprehension in interpretation and teaching strategies are presented. Somepedagogical principles are put forward to aid the listening teaching in interpretationtraining class, such as the roles of the teacher and the students, the aim of listeningcomprehension course in interpretation class and the teaching of listening strategies.The conclusion part summarizes the findings of this thesis, points out somelimitations of the study, and makes some suggestions for future research.