On The Effectiveness Of Interpretation Teaching In Public English Class Of Higher Vocational Colleges—an Empirical Research

Interpretation refers to a form of oral expression during the process of which the interpreter accurately and quickly transforms the information he/she hears into another language, in order to realize the goal of information exchange. In the higher education of China, interpretation course has for a considerably long period of time been designed only for senior undergraduate English majors. Studies on interpretation teaching have also been for a long time centering on that for senior undergraduate English majors. In recent years, attention has also been given to interpretation teaching for undergraduate non-English majors with an aim to better develop and utilize education resources. However, little effort has been made in the field of interpretation teaching in the setting of public English class in higher vocational colleges. Considering the fact that public English teaching in higher vocational colleges also takes as its objectives the training of students’ communicative and practical abilities and this requirement is far from being satisfactorily met currently, the present study is intended to explore the effectiveness of interpretation teaching in the said setting.This study is carried out in the setting of public English class in higher vocational college, taking as its research subjects64second grade financial management majors of two parallel classes in a higher vocational college. The study mainly focuses on answering two questions:(1) Can interpretation teaching effectively improve higher vocational college students’ overall English competence?(2) Can interpretation teaching effectively improve higher vocational college students’ interpretation competence? The instruments adopted include a pretest/posttest nonequivalent groups design, i.e., general English competence pretest and posttest in the experimental class and in the control class, a one-group pretest-posttest design, i.e. English interpretation pretest and posttest in the experimental class, and a questionnaire survey which is carried out in the experimental class at the end of the experiment to provide additional data supporting possible findings of the study. The results of the experiment show that (1) students in the experimental class have a better performance in the general English competence posttest than those in the control class do, thus indicating that interpretation training carried out in the setting of higher vocational college public English class can improve students’ general English competence.(2) The English interpretation competence of the students in the experimental class has been improved to a considerable extent. Besides, the majorities of the students believe that interpretation training is acceptable to them and are willing and active in participating in this kind of training.The findings of this study may supplement the researches on interpretation teaching, and further extend the second language acquisition study.