An Experiment Report On The Influence Of Note-taking On Consecutive Interpreting Quality

Note-taking is an indispensable skill for interpreters in consecutive interpreting(CI).Note-taking can store the interpreters’ memory,and also help to clarify the logic of the text.Interpreting notes provide a unique research field for scholars.Language choice of note-taking has been studied extensively,yet no consensus has been reached.The paper is devoted to ascertaining the language choice and symbols in CI notes,and finding the correlation between these two aspects and CI quality.The author conducted an experiment of CI on 41 Junior English Majors in Lanzhou Jiaotong University.Through the tests,the author collected the subjects’ notes and recordings,conducted a questionnaire after the experiment,evaluated the CI quality of the subjects,and randomly selected 12 subjects in different score segments for semi-structured interviews according to the principle of “variable sampling maximization”.The author analyzed the CI notes and used Statistical Products and Services Solutions(SPSS 23.0)to find their correlation with the CI quality.Based on Gile’s effort model,the paper discussed the influence of undergraduates’ note-taking on CI quality.The results showed that: 1.The overall characteristics of CI notes were:(1)College students mainly used the source language to take notes in CI;(2)College students used some symbols in their notes,but they have not established their own symbol system;(3)Most of the notes were horizontal notes.2.In college students’ CI notes,The proportion of source language was positively correlated with the CI quality.3.In E-C test,the use of symbols in notes had no correlation with the CI quality.In C-E test,the more meaningful symbols there were in the subjects’ notes,the better the CI quality was.The results suggested that note-taking skills,symbol system,listening comprehension of long and complex sentences,and oral English expression ability need to be addressed in the future.Based on the above findings,the author put forward corresponding teaching suggestions for CI notes.At the same time,college students should broaden their background knowledge in various industries and fields and consolidate their basic English skills,in order to improve their comprehensive quality and better serve the society.