The Impact Of The Lexical Approach On The Fluency And Accuracy Of English Majors’ Chinese-English Consecutive Interpretation

The role of chunks in second language teaching and learning has been the focus of much recent research. The research findings of chunks seem quite fruitful and give us an in-depth and detailed picture of the considerable effect of chunks in second language output. However, most of the existing empirical researches at home mainly embed in the importance of chunks or implementation of the lexical approach in listening、speaking、reading and writing, despite the fact that some researches have extended beyond them. Consecutive interpretation, as a new rising skill-training course, aims at cultivating learners’ability to do interpretation with fluency and accuracy. Some researchers attempt to explore the role of chunks in interpretation. Most of their studies are confined to describing and commenting the role of chunks in interpretation based on previous studies and their personal experience. The empirical studies on consecutive interpretation are relatively rare. This paper will report on an empirical study designed to investigate the impact of the lexical approach on the fluency and accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation.The present study mainly adopts the quasi-experimental study with a questionnaire and diary as supplementary instruments. The study explores two groups of students’performance on the fluency and accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation in a pretest/midtest/posttest design. A sample of43fourth-year English majors from two parallel classes of Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuchang Branch are assigned as experiment group and control group at random. Students in experiment group receive the lexical approach based on the original teaching, while students in control group are taught only based on the original teaching contents. The treatment lasts15weeks. The students of both groups take the written test in week one and the three Chinese-English consecutive interpretation tests in week two, week eight and week sixteen. The degree of difficulty of both written test and three Chinese-English consecutive interpretation tests is the equal of Certificate Test for Intermediate Interpretation in Shanghai. After the experiment, Independent Samples Tests are utilized to explore whether the treatment will cause significant difference in the students’performance on fluency and accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation and the number of correctly used chunks in their interpretation. In addition, Paired Samples Tests are used to test the impact of the lexical approach on the students from different language proficiency. Analysis of Variance is carried out to see whether the number of correctly used chunks in three different language proficiency groups appears to be significantly different. A questionnaire administered at the end of the experiment and students’diary serve as the complementary instruments to explore the students’attitudes towards the lexical approach in experiment group.The results show that the lexical approach can exert a positive effect on the fluency and accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation after treatment. The total number of correctly used chunks by the students receiving the lexical approach increase significantly compared with those who do not receive the lexical approach. As for the students at different language proficiency groups, those from the advanced proficiency group benefit more from the lexical approach on both the fluency and accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation. The students from intermediate language proficiency group make notable progress in their accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation and some progress in the fluency of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation. Nevertheless, the students from elementary language proficiency group make significant improvement in the fluency of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation and meager improvement in the accuracy of Chinese-English consecutive interpretation. In addition, the number of correctly used chunks in intermediate language proficiency group tends to increase more effectively. Through the answers to the questionnaire and students’diary, it is found that the majority from experiment group has favorable comments towards the lexical approach and realize the role that the lexical approach plays in Chinese-English consecutive interpretation.