How Shadowing And Retelling Without Notes Help Interpreting Beginners’ Listening Training:an Empirical Study From Cognitive Perspective

The need for interpreters on the market takes on a pyramid-like style, so should it be with interpreters’training. According to the survey conducted by Shanghai Foreign Studies University in2003, only4.4%of the university respondents could understand English news at normal speed, which well demonstrated students’ listening incapability. As listening is the prerequisite for interpreting, it is essential to design tailor-made listening trainings for interpreting beginners.However, former interpreting studies mainly focused on the top layers of the pyramid, namely conference interpreting and simultaneous interpreters. In terms of listening in interpreting, training methods for interpreting from the perspective of teaching and self-training is the least explored aspect. As a result, the present thesis aimed to test listening training models for interpreting beginners at the bottom of the pyramid.Shadowing and retelling without notes are commonly used for listening training with respective focuses on attention splitting and summarizing. But as Gile mentioned in the book Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreter and Translator Training, few empirical studies have ever been conducted in this regard. The researcher conducted a one-month listening experiment involving15freshmen in applied English at Zhejiang Business Technology Institute and intended to test the impact of shadowing and retelling without notes alone and combined on liaison interpreting without notes. The results showed that in self-trainings without supervision, students tended to use notes to facilitate retelling. Thus they actually failed to complete the task of retelling without notes. Instead, shadowing is helpful to interpreting beginners who need to free themselves from the mindset of notes as an essential facilitator to interpreting and improve their listening in interpreting gradually and in a more relaxed way. So shadowing should be incorporated in preliminary courses for interpreting beginners.