An Empirical Study Of The Correlation Between English Listening Comprehension Anxiety And E-C Consecutive Interpreting

With the deepening of globalization, the exchanges and communication between China and the rest of the world are increasingly frequent. As a major bridge of exchanges and communication, interpreting plays a more and more significant role, which leads to an increasing demand for qualified professional interpreters. In this context, Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) was approved by the Academic Degree Commission of the State Council in2007and15universities have been chosen as the pilot universities to set up MTI programme. By2013,159universities in total have offered MTI degree. The rapid development of interpreting industry comes along with the researches on interpreting theories and practice and there is a marked trend of interdisciplinary research in this area.Based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis, the present thesis explores the correlation between listening comprehension anxiety and English-Chinese (E-C) consecutive interpreting performance among interpreting trainees, aiming at helping interpreting trainees to find out the major factors that cause listening comprehension (LC) anxiety during interpreting and its influence on interpreting performance so that they can better fulfill interpreting tasks. Besides that, this study is trying to provide some reference for future studies on relevant topics. Empirical study is applied to this thesis. Firstly,17interpreting post-graduate students are chosen as samples and an E-C consecutive interpreting mock test is conducted among them whose voices are recorded; secondly, a questionnaire survey on LC anxiety of E-C consecutive interpreting is carried out among the17participants; thirdly, according to the results of the questionnaire,9most representative samples’interpreting recordings are analyzed: three of the highest anxiety level, three of the middlemost average anxiety level and three of the lowest anxiety level; finally, with the help of Statistical Passage for Social Science (SPSS20.0), collected statistics are processed and analyzed.The findings of the study indicate:(1) interpreting trainees experience the listening comprehension anxiety during E-C consecutive interpreting;(2) three kinds of factors affecting LC anxiety during E-C consecutive interpreting are identified as accent factor, speaking rate factor and bilingual technique factor;(3) a negative correlation is found between listening comprehension anxiety and E-C consecutive interpreting quality.According to the major findings, strategies of reducing LC anxiety during E-C consecutive interpreting and improving interpreting quality are discussed. In addition, limitations of the study are pointed out and recommendations for future studies are put forward based on the limitations.Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis is usually used to discuss the second language acquisition. The innovation of the present thesis is to employ the Affective Filter Hypothesis to probing into the interpreting quality. This study attempts to explore the relations between interpreting performance and interpreting trainees’LC anxiety which belongs to the psychological category rather than bilingual proficiency and interpreting technique of interpreting trainees.