A Validation Study Of Levels Of The Typical Consecutive Conference Interpreting Activities Based On The Interpreting Scales Of China's Standards Of English Language Ability

In the process of consecutive conference interpreting(CCI)learning,the exercise materials of student interpreters after class almost come from different CCI activities.However,sometimes,it is difficult for student interpreters to judge whether the exercise materials are proper enough to match their abilities because they do not have a comprehensive understanding of their interpreting abilities.The interpreting scales of China's Standards of English Language Ability(CSE)which are released in 2018,provide student interpreters with a tool to assess the difficulty level of CCI activities.However,the interpreting scales are newly-developed,which need to be validated repeatedly.Whether the consecutive conference activities described in the interpreting scales are typical and whether the level setting is reasonable or not still need to be further validated.Based on the problems above,this research aims to unravel the typical activities of the consecutive conference interpreting based on CSE interpreting scales and investigate the appropriateness of the levels of those activities.The research objective will be achieved by answering the following two questions:(1)What are the typical consecutive conference interpreting(CCI)activities based on CSE interpreting scales?(2)How is the difficulty level of those CCI activities?In order to answer those two questions,questionnaire is adopted in the study.For research question 1,a questionnaire about the CCI typical activities is developed based on the interpreting scales.The data from MTI and MA student interpreters,teacher interpreters,and professional interpreters through questionnaire will be collected and analyzed to find out what the typical CCI activities are.For research question 2,based on the result of question 1 and the interpreting scales,another questionnaire is designed with 12 descriptors of typical CCI activities unchanged.This questionnaire is about the self-assessment of interpreting performance in typical CCI activities.Then Rasch Model is employed to analyze data to validate the appropriateness of the difficulty level setting for those CCI activities.The data of the first-round survey is analyzed by SPSS and the data of the second round is analyzed by WINISTEPS.The results of this thesis are: first,based on the CSE interpreting scales,there are 9 typical CCI topics in the interpreting learning phase and interpreting career,that is,business negotiations,corporate briefing,promotion of technology,tourism promotion,academic talk,news conference,policy briefing,foreign affairs meetings,and high-level talks.Second,according to the finding of the first survey and the second investigation,the difficulty levels of those typical CCI activities are appropriate,but there are still some descriptors that need to be optimized according to the feedback of participants.By answering the preceding research questions,the setting of difficulty levels of CCI activities in the CSE interpreting scales has been validated.The significance of this research is mainly reflected in the following aspects: firstly,it promotes the development of autonomous learning strategy study in interpreting;secondly,it provides a reference for the revision and adjustment of the levels of CSE Interpreting Scale;and at last,it facilitates student interpreters' autonomous learning of consecutive conference interpreting.