A Survey Report On Interpreting Students’ Autonomous Learning Of Note-Taking In Consecutive Interpreting

Note-taking plays an indispensable role in consecutive interpreting.But for note-taking beginners,notes can greatly constrain their ability to listen and analyze the source language,thus seriously affecting the quality of interpretation.Only through vast amounts of note-taking practice can interpreting students make notes an effective aid for interpreting.First introduced to the field of foreign language learning in 1979 by Henri Holec,autonomous learning refers to learners taking the initiative to choose the learning content,assess and manage their learning progress in order to achieve learning goals.Therefore,this study examines how interpreting students deploy metacognitive strategies to facilitate their note-taking learning from the perspective of autonomous learning.The author investigated the autonomous note-taking learning situation of 52 interpreting students from China Foreign Affairs University,Beijing Foreign Studies University,Shanghai Foreign Studies University,etc.,their perceptions on using metacognitive strategies to learn note-taking,and the effect of metacognitive strategy deficiency on their note-taking learning.The methods used in this study are questionnaire,interview and experiment.The results of the questionnaire and interview show that the interpreting students scored the highest in the level of monitoring strategies,the second highest in the level of evaluation strategies,and the lowest in the level of planning strategies in note-taking learning.They have strong monitoring abilities and are able to point out their own mistakes in time,but are relatively deficient in deploying evaluating strategies and planning strategies,as reflected by that they rarely make medium-to-long term and targeted note-taking learning plans,and that they do not frequently evaluate their progress in learning note-taking to adjust their learning methods plans.In addition,the experiment shows that the lack of any single metacognitive substrategy would limit the efficiency of note-taking learning.Based on these findings,this thesis proposes suggestions for interpreting trainees and instructors in terms of note-taking learning and note-taking teaching.