Difficulties And Coping Strategies Of Note-taking In Consecutive Interpreting Under The Guidance Of Effort Model

Note-taking,as a basic interpreting skill,plays an impressive role in assisting short-term memory in consecutive interpreting(CI).But note-taking skill is just one part of note-taking since interpreting is a very complicated cognitive activity.According to Daniel Gile's effort model,in the listening phase of CI,comprehension,logical analysis,note-taking,short-term memory and coordination compete for limited mental energy at the same time,which means that problems in any part of these cognitive activities would affect the process of the others,leading to the imbalance of effort distribution,then exerting influence on target-language production.For the same reason,the deficiency in any of these capabilities would have an impact on the coding and decoding of notes.Thus we can see that there still exist many cognitive difficulties in the application of note-taking.Since effort model was put forward by Daniel Gile,this model has been applied to quite a few academic researches.But Gile came up with his effort model for simultaneous interpreting first,then extended it to consecutive interpreting.So his model has been applied more in the research of simultaneous interpreting.Moreover,the research of CI mainly focused on short-term memory and target-language production,while the application of effort model to note-taking in CI is uncommon.In view of this circumstance,this thesis,taking Gile's effort model as its guidance and the simulated interpreting of a speech given by Lang Xianping in Qsinghua University as the source of examples,aims to explore difficulties and coping strategies of note-taking in CI.This thesis takes Daniel Gile's effort model to clarify the basic mechanism of interpreting and the principle of note-taking in interpreting.And through the analyses of the interpreting efforts in Gile's model,including comprehension,memory and production,difficulties of note-taking application in CI under cognitive load are explored,which consist of difficulties in listening and analysis,incapability of short-term memory and poor production of target language.Meanwhile,corresponding strategies are proposed to cope with these three difficulties in note-taking:preparation before interpreting and logic-reconstructing,omitting repeated and useless information and coordinating efforts between short-term memory and note-taking,and improving short-term memory and developing personalized note system.Based on these difficulties and strategies,the interpreting task and notes are analyzed in this thesis,and a conclusion is made eventually:effective allocation of mental energy must be based on the mastery of individual tasks by the interpreter.The incapability of any operations would disturb the balance of effort distribution,then bringing difficulties to note-taking.Therefore,it is critical to improve the comprehensive ability of interpreting.And the correct understanding towards note-taking and the mastery of correct note-taking training method are also the key to the success of interpreting.Taking Gile's effort modal as its theoretical guidance,this thesis will make use of the examples from simulated interpreting to analyze the cognitive difficulties of note-taking in application and the feasibility of those coping strategies,in the hope of providing some enlightenment to the relative researches and application in how to effectively cope with note-taking difficulties in CI.