An Empirical Study On English Interpretation Classroom Anxiety

Since the1960s, with the development of humanistic psychology, foreign language researchers and educators both abroad and at home have been paying attention to language learners’affective variables. Considered to be an important affective variable, foreign language anxiety has been found widespread among different groups of students in various contexts, and fruitful researches of foreign language anxiety have shed light on the foreign language education.Though it is widely agreed that anxiety is an important factor in interpretation performance, interpretation studies have largely ignored affective variables. Furthermore, most researches on interpretation anxiety are concerned the anxiety of professional interpreters, while only a few focus on the learning anxiety of interpretation students.In this study, an empirical study of interpretation students’anxiety was conducted. Quantitatively, the author investigated the scope, severity of students’anxiety in interpretation class; the correlation between interpretation anxiety and interpretation achievement as well as the effect of different majors on students’interpretation anxiety. Qualitatively, the author analyzed the factors leading to students’interpretation anxiety.A total of134undergraduate English majors including Translation and Interpreting majors, Teaching English as A Foreign Language majors and Business English majors enrolled in interpretation class respond to a survey in this study. The instruments employed in the quantitative research include the Interpretation Classroom Anxiety Scale (ICAS) developed by Chiang (2006) and a model test of Shanghai Interpretation Accreditation. First, descriptive analyses of the students’responses to the ICAS and a one-sample t-test are employed respectively to test the scope and severity of interpretation anxiety. Then, the Pearson product-moment correlation analysis is conducted to examine the correlation between the whole interpretation anxiety scale and students’achievement scores, as well as the correlation between the three subcomponents of the ICAS and students’achievement scores respectively. After that, a One-way ANOVA is conducted to test whether different majors have a significant effect on students’interpretation anxiety. For the qualitative research,8students of various levels of interpretation anxiety are selected to have interviews by asking them their feelings and thoughts about interpretation classes, so as to analyze the factors leading to their interpretation anxiety.The findings first show that interpretation students experience interpretation anxiety and exhibit high level of interpretation anxiety. Secondly, the ICAS as a whole and its three subcomponents are significantly and negatively correlated with students’ achievement. Thirdly, Translation and Interpreting majors are found to experience lower interpretation anxiety than both Teaching English as A Foreign Language majors and Business English majors. In accordance with this result, significantly lower levels of anxiety on its two subcomponents (Cognitive Processing Anxiety and Fear of Interpretation Class and Negative Evaluation) are found as well in Translation and Interpreting majors. The qualitative analyses of the interview data yield three major factors leading to students’ interpretation anxiety, including variables related to interpretation task, classroom environment and procedures as well as learning belief and character of interpretation student.At last, based on the results of present study, suggestions for pedagogical practices are put forward to help teachers and students cope with interpretation anxiety and improve students’interpretation proficiency.