A Study On Learners’ And Teachers’ Perceptions Of Task Repetition In Consecutive Interpreting Class

Task repetition is one of the most frequently and widely used pedagogical approaches in second language teaching and learning.Currently,numerous empirical studies have focused on the effects of task repetition on English learners’ performance of speaking and writing tasks,which approved that task repetition could effectively improve learners’ spoken English and written English performance regarding fluency,accuracy,completeness and syntactic complexity.However,previous studies of task repetition have hardly touched upon effects of task repetition on consecutive interpreting and a few studies were found to explore learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of task repetition used as a pedagogy in consecutive interpreting class,which might greatly affect the teaching effects and learning performance.This thesis compares interpreting learners’ different performances before and after applying task repetition in class and discusses learners’ and teachers’ viewpoints on task repetition with the aim to provide useful suggestions for consecutive interpreting teaching and learning.The working definition of task repetition in this thesis refers to repeating the same task with an interval of one month.This study consists of two experiments,semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire.Sixteen third-year translation majors participated in the experimental tests twice with an interval of one month and 53 participants took the questionnaire.Results of the detailed quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis show the following findings: 1)Task repetition is of great value and help in improving students’ consecutive interpreting output in terms of fluency and accuracy.However,completeness of output was not improved obviously.2)Learners were found to have high cognitive engagement but low affective engagement in consecutive interpreting class,when task repetition was implemented in the experiments.3)Learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of task repetition in consecutive interpreting class do not necessarily correspond.The disparity of attitudes towards task repetition as a pedagogy suggests that teachers need to alter slightly the material under the same theme to arouse learners’ affective engagement and to further enhance learners’ cognitive engagement in consecutive interpreting class when conducting task repetition,so that students’ learning effects and teachers’ teaching effects could be maximized.