| Schema,as the active organization of past reactions or past experiences in human brain,is the internal foundation to perceive,recognize and understand external world around us.Any cognitive activity occurring in our brain requires activating relevant schemata.Currently,this concept has been widely applied into linguistics,foreign language teaching and other academic fields,owing to its important role and great significance in exploring human cognitive process.However,the studies which apply schema theory to interpreting are still inadequate,most of which stay on theoretical analyzing level.Interpreting,from a holistic view,is a complex activity mainly about switching between two languages.Nevertheless,it involves highly complicated cognitive processes,including source text comprehension,message capturing and memorizing and target speech constructing.Schema theory believes that the knowledge obtained from past experience in human brain is organized to form relevant schemata,providing guidance for understanding new information,and assisting to predict possible development under certain situation.In memory systems in interpreting,three important types of schema,namely language schema,content schema and formal schema,can function to enhance memory and aid information retrieving.Retelling exercise is an interpreting training approach,occasionally used in courses of translation and interpreting major in some universities,in order to improve interpreting memory of students.However,in real practices,the role and function of retelling exercises are often ignored,and the studies related to effects of retelling on consecutive interpreting learners are rare.The present thesis attempts to combine schema theory and an empirical study on interpreting together.In theoretical part,an illustration of interpreting process is given based on schema theory and Gile’ s Effort Model.In experimental part,the researcher chooses 31 sophomores of English Translation and Interpreting major from a university in Xi’an,and adopts an experiment of comparing statistics of pre-test and post-test to quantify the influence of retelling exercises on interpreting memory.In addition,this research employs interview answers to reveal the mental activities and memory mechanism from the perspective of schema theory.Finally it comes to a conclusion that schema indeed plays an important role in interpreter’s working memory.After exercising for four weeks,the information units and sense groups in interpreting memory of these interpreting beginners have increased and the four types of errors(Omission,Intrusion,Movement and Replacement)have decreased respectively,among which Omission Error reduced to the largest extent.Therefore,retelling exercises exert a positive effect on prolonging interpreting memory span and improving interpreting accuracy.It is hoped that the thesis can arouse interpreters’ and trainers’attention on schema and retelling exercises,in order to train interpreting memory and perfect interpreting performances. |
