A Study On The Correlation Between English Listening Anxiety And Interpreting Anxiety

As a foreign language activity featuring high anxiety,interpreting is considered to be one most challenging task in foreign language skill.Interpreting anxiety has great effects on interpreting performance.Student interpreters may behave well in the usual training,but may achieve bad performance in real interpreting practice or interpreting test,as a result of anxiety.There are many researches about interpreting anxiety,which focus mainly on discussing the reasons of interpreting anxiety from the aspects such as the speakers,the audiences,the interpreters,the interpreting tasks and the classroom procedures.This thesis aims to provide beneficial enlightenment for reducing interpreting anxiety and improving the interpreting quality of student interpreters by revealing the correlation between listening anxiety in English study and interpreting anxiety.Student interpreters(including undergraduates and MTI students)were invited to participate in the investigation.On the basis of the Interpreting Anxiety Questionnaire and the Listening Anxiety Questionnaire made by the research group,this thesis collects data from the research subjects and then uses the SPSS mathematical statistic method to analyze the data.This thesis tries to explore the similarities and differences between these two patterns of anxiety,reveal their features and the correlation between English listening anxiety and interpreting anxiety,especially the correlation between the English listening anxiety and the listening and memorizing anxiety in the interpreting cognitive processing anxiety.This thesis has reached the following conclusions:1)All undergraduates and MTI students have interpreting anxiety and listening anxiety to some extent,and undergraduates display a higher level of anxiety than MTI students.2)There is a positive correlation between English listening anxiety and interpreting anxiety.3)The correlation between English listening anxiety,listening and memorizing anxiety of interpreting cognitive processing anxiety is the most significant.4)Some factors in English listening anxiety are more significantly related to interpreting anxiety.On this foundation,this thesis provides some suggestions of reducing interpreting anxiety.1)It is necessary for both students and teachers to recognize,accept and be clear about the listening anxiety and interpreting anxiety.2)In order to reduce the interpreting anxiety and enhance the interpreting quality,it is necessary for the students to first of all improve their listening skills and get rid of their listening difficulties.3)It's important for the teachers to introduce to students the differences between general listening and listening in interpreting.4)Other factors such as the language proficiency,intercultural knowledge,translation skills,learning strategies,motivation,etc are also key factors leading to interpreting anxiety.The combination of all relevant factors can work together to reduce interpreting anxiety and lead to better interpreting quality.Based on the analysis of the correlation between listening anxiety and interpreting anxiety,this thesis provides suggestions for reducing listening anxiety in English study so as to lower interpreting anxiety,and better interpreting performances can be achieved.This thesis is expected to provide helpful enlightenment to interpreting study and teaching.