Listening Comprehension Barriers For MTI Students In E-C Consecutive Interpretation And Coping Strategies

As a bridge of communication among different languages and cultures, interpretation has been increasingly important. Thanks to the acceleration of globalization, frequent exchanges have been made in politics, economy and culture, so interpretation becomes an indispensable media of cross-culture communication. This thesis focuses on one of the key steps in E-C consecutive interpretation—listening comprehension. Listening comprehension is the first stage in the process of consecutive interpretation, because one can not fulfill interpretation task without listening comprehension.However,interpreting researches home and abroad are restricted in features of different phases in the process of interpretation. Empirical researches are not enough, especially studies on the listening comprehension barriers of MTI students. Therefore, an empirical research is carried out in this thesis to study what listening comprehension barriers MTI students may encounter in E-C consecutive interpretation. After collecting all the data, the author finds out new words, complex numbers, heavy accent, lack of background knowledge and weakness in energy distribution are the main reasons bringing great trouble to MTI students during listening comprehension. Then the thesis uses a series of passages from several typical materials the author practiced in interpreting class to demonstrate those five major barriers. Then coping strategies are put forward to overcome listening comprehension barriers from linguistic and non-linguistic aspects, including expansion of vocabulary, specialized training on number interpreting, note-taking and accumulation of cultural knowledge. In the end, the author offers suggestions on interpreting teaching so as to improve the quality of interpretation teaching.