The Correlation Between Extroversion/Introversion And Interpretation Accuracy In Consecutive Interpretation

This thesis reports a study conducted to investigate the correlation between extroversion/introversion and interpretation accuracy in consecutive interpretation. The data on personality type were collected through an Extroversion/Introversion Questionnaire and was administered to 21 graduate students in their first year after receiving systematic consecutive interpreting skills for a half year in the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. The participants' interpretation accuracy is assessed in 3 different layers such as basic information units; difficult sentences units as well as structure information units. The correlation between extroversion/introversion and their achievement in interpretation accuracy was then examined through SPSS 13.0.It was found that when the total scores of their discourse interpretation were concerned, there was no significant correlation between the two variables. However, according to the descriptive statistics, introverts tend to do better in English into Chinese consecutive interpreting in terms of interpretation accuracy; while extroverts tend to outperform in Chinese into English consecutive interpreting in terms of interpretation accuracy. When their achievement in each layer of interpretation accuracy was taken into consideration, the participants with different personality types have made similar achievements in the third layer of structure information units from Chinese into English consecutive interpreting. Extroverts and introverts respectively tend to do better in terms of different parts in the three layers.The study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the correlation between extroversion/introversion and their achievement in consecutive interpretation accuracy from English to Chinese and Chinese into English.Based on the investigation, the limitations of the experiment and the research are discussed in details, and the implications to both interpreting teachers and learners or even practitioners are presented.