The Effectiveness Of Symbols And Abbreviations In Note-taking Of Consecutive Interpreting

While symbols and abbreviations are not regarded as an important part of the teaching plans and are seldom mentioned in the higher learning institutions, they turn out to be a selling point of various specialized interpreting training institutions. Such a contrast is of great interest to the author who has received training from both parties and tasted the benefit from the employment of symbols and abbreviations. So the author set out to study their effect in the improvement of CI quality. Daniel Gile's Effort Model is introduced as a theoretical framework to justify the desirable role of symbols and abbreviations. To further explain the effectiveness of them, an explanatory experiment is designed and conducted. In the experiment, twenty-two fresh learners in interpreting are divided into control and experimental groups and both receive a two-month interpreting training course. Symbols and abbreviations become the highlight of teaching plans for the experimental group yet are not included in those for the control one. Both pretest and posttest are held. Final scores are given on following four aspects respectively - clause recall, key word retrieval, dysfluency markers and speed rate. Test results show that the experimental group gain significantly greater progress than the control group in terms of clause recall and speed rate. That is to say, symbols and abbreviations really contribute to completeness and speediness of CI quality. Though score difference in the other two parameters which reflect accuracy and fluency is not significant enough, if sufficient time for training is available, it is still possible that the experimental group can get an upper hand over the control one.