A Qualitative Study On Advanced Interpreting Students’ Perceptions Of Working Memory In Consecutive Interpreting

This study investigates advanced interpreting students’ perceptions of thecomparison between Chinese (L1) and English (L2) working memory (WM) capacitythrough questionnaire survey, which is a fresh perspective. Most research to date hasmeasured interpreters’ working memory capacity through experimental approaches,e.g., reading span tests (Padilla et al.,1995; Service, Simola, Metsaenheimo&Maury,2002), and interpreters’ individual perceptions were neglected in doing so. Theresearcher intends to take this point into consideration and explore that whetherprevious test findings could be echoed from the different and new angle. Furthermore,these previous studies have mainly focused on WM in simultaneous interpreting, whilethe area of consecutive interpreting has attracted surprisingly limited attention. Theresearcher extends the issue to the area of consecutive interpreting. Results of thequestionnaire survey show three major findings, i.e.,1> note-taking and productionare respectively considered as the most difficult part in E-C and C-E CI;2> theinfluence produced by memory difficulty on production is relatively greater in E-C CIthan C-E CI;3> a great majority of interpreting students exhibit higher workingmemory capacity for Chinese，which is the most important finding in the current study.The WM capacity-enlarging methods which the subjects deem as indeed effectiveaccording to their own experiences are also accumulated through the questionnaires.The practice of note-taking and visualization are believed as two of the most usefulmethods. Enlightenment has been provided to enriching methodology in futurerelevant studies.