The Current Interpreting Assessment Situation In College Interpreting Course

As the demand for interpreters is on the rise,the interpreting course in universities is also witnessing great developments in its scope.Under this circumstance,it is quite significant to increase our research in the interpreting assessment models and know its current situation in order to cultivate more interpreting talents for the market.So,this thesis,on the one hand,after reviewing the theoretical developments in the domain of interpreting assessment(interpreting teaching assessment,interpreting occupational assessment and interpreting research assessment included)and the empirical achievements in teaching assessment,tries to sum up the deficiency in the existing interpreting assessment systems in terms of construct validity,coordination and flexibility by carrying out questionnaire research,teacher interviews and classroom observation.Specifically speaking,for construct validity,an intergrated assessment mechanism is not in place,which is supposed to take a criteria-based approach rather than a norm-based approach,and there is a lack of a clear distinction of sub-domains and a lack of a standardized framework;for coordination,the unbalanced development between testing and in-class performance assessment,in-class guidance and off-class homework assessment,the students' expectation and the teachers' in terms of the focus of assessment hinders the effective and real-time feedbacks from teachers to students;for flexibility,the students' lack of presence throughout the whole process of assessment influences the validity of assessment as the strong presence of the teachers has become a norm.Besides,the monotonous feedback approach as well as practice approach further deteriorates the problem.All of these have worked together and imposed negative influence on students' grasping and improvement of interpreting skills,preventing students from receiving any timely feedbacks and making self-correction.On the other hand,the author tries to find out the counterstrategies to address the problems by referring to the relevant formative assessment theory in language learning and states that in interpreting teaching,more assessment subjects(not only teachers,but peers and the individual learner)should be involved in the interpreting assessment and play their respective role in class guidance(based on the exsiting norm-based measures)and off-class performance assessment(based on the criteria-based measures in interpreting occupational assessment)by using different parameters while a personal portfolio should also be established throughout the course.In this way,a more comprehensive assessment system will be put in place so that the assessment for students will become more objective and fair,which will eventually promote the acquisition of interpreting skills for students and develop interpreting education in a more scientific and systematic way.