An Empirical Research Of The Relationship Between Interpreting Test Anxiety And Disfluency In Chinese-English Consecutive Interpreting

For the past decade,scholars have researched into Interpreting Test Anxiety(ITA)from a psychological perspective.The external manifestations and internal causes of ITA have aroused great interest.However,very few studies have focused on the relationship between ITA and interpreting performance.Also,a lack of scientific measurement makes it hard to acquire accurate data and get convincing findings.What' more,most related studies are concerned with simultaneous interpreting and the number of studies on consecutive interpreting is quite few.On the one hand,interpreting anxiety is widely believed to affect interpreting performance.On the other hand,disfluency is regarded as a major indicator in the evaluation of interpreting performance.In this thesis,an empirical study was conducted,aiming at exploring the relationship between ITA and disfluency in Chinese-English consecutive interpreting.Based on the Interpreting Test Anxiety Scale(ITAS)developed by Kang(2012)and testing material of Shanghai Interpretation Test(2015),the author conducted an experiment on 38 junior English major students in Xiamen University,exploring the relationship between interpreting test anxiety and four aspects of disfluency,including silent pause,filled pause,repeat and self-repair.The findings indicate that students with medium level of ITA are less disfluent than those with high or low level.There are significant and positive correlations between high level anxiety and filled pause,repeat and self-repair.The medium anxiety level shows significant and negative correlations with repeat and self-repair,a significant and positive correlation with silent pause,and a positive but insignificant correlation with filled pause.There are significant and positive correlations between low level ITA and repeat and self-repair,positive but insignificant correlations between low level and silent pause and filled pause.The findings suggest that medium anxiety can reduce disfluency in interpreting.Based on these findings,some suggestions on utilizing ITA to improve interpreting fluency are put forward.It is hoped that this research can contribute to the academic explorations of interpreting anxiety and interpreting disfluency.