姓名：严婷婷 学号：0812010007 班级：08英语1班
My Learning Feedback of the Interpreting Course
It’s really lucky for me to have taken the course of interpreting skills this term, because this course really benefits me a lot.
Above all, my listening skills have been improved to a much higher level than before through interpreting learning. We all know that, without a good listening to catch what the speakers say in source language, it would be impossible for us interpreters to transform it into the target language. Listening is the first and primary step for English learners to be a good interpreter. Keeping this realization in the mind, I pay my special attention to the study of listening. In the class, the routine of news listening always reminds me of the importance of listening towards this course. After class, I insist on spending one or two hours every day listening BBC, VOA, CNN, CRI or any other English resource I can get to practice English listening. With nearly a term’s perseverant efforts, you can imagine the progress that has been made. Nowadays, I have less difficulty in understanding what foreigners say in daily life. I can still follow speakers without referring to the Chinese translation when I watch movies. It is the Interpreting Course that pushes me to listen to English every day so as to avoid being rusty on the skills. I appreciate this class, not only because it helps to improve my listening ability, but also it makes me form a habit of listening to English every day. We are not English native speakers, so it is preeminently important for us learners to listen to it all the time so that we can immense ourselves in the atmosphere surrounded by English language. In the following days, the good habit will continue to accompany me. Keep listening, and I believe one day my listening skills will reach the level that a qualified interpreter should do.
The second benefit I have got from the class is the improvement of my spoken English. Admittedly, an interpreter must be bilingually capable of not only listening but also speaking. Interpreting requires you to express in target language what you’ve got from the source language on the basis of understanding. In this sense, only being a good listener is not enough at all. When I knew the fact in the first class of this course, I really felt a big challenge in front of me. Spoken English was always my strongest
weakpoint. Each time I tried to speak out English, the poor pronunciation and intonation can not be endured even by myself, still less by my listeners. So I chose to shut up my mouth. Avoid speaking it and then you would avoid discomfort and being frustrated by it, which was always the way I used to comfort myself before taking the class. However, things change now. The Interpreting Course is different from the courses we have learnt before. In the class of listening, reading, grammar and writing, most of the time is spent listening to the teachers’ speech and no one will blame you if you choose to be silent. In this course, however, you have to speak out English, whether you like it or not. At first, I was forced to speak English in the class. Gradually, I dared to practice interpreting and now I feel easy when hearing my own voice. Although my spoken English is far away from the requirements a good interpreter needs to meet, I am still pleased with the progress I’ve made now because I believe that “Well begun is half done” and “Practice makes perfect.”
The most important and direct harvest I achieve from the course is certainly the theory and skills of interpreting. The issues of how to take notes in interpretation, how to memorize the information and what manners interpreters should have are all covered in this course. A good mastery of these skills undoubtedly will smooth the way for interpreters to do their job.
However, there still exist some problems after taking the class.
Firstly, I find that different regional accents that English speakers have are the big obstacle for us English learners to overcome. We have indeed studied the foreign language for many years, but just focused on the standard English. So, when we listen to some non-standard English in our coursebook, we can hardly understand what the speakers are saying, not to mention interpret it. This gives us a reminder that you need to have a good mastery of different kinds of varieties of English, not just the Standard English if you as an interpreter want to perform well on different occasions.
Secondly, the huge psychology stress is also a big problem we always meet when interpreting. When we learn the course, actually, we do the job in an ideal environment. We just listen to the sound recordings and interpret to ourselves. What only matters is our professional skill. However, interpreting in the real situation is not
such a simple case at all. Psychology stress is a good example. The occasion, the persons you serve for, the atmosphere, all these things may cause your tension during your job and therefore bring a bad effect on your performance. Mistakes, embarrassment caused by stage fright occur very often. So, what we should do now to help us overcome psychology stress in the future’s interpreting job? Maybe, the best way is just to put yourself in the real situation. The more you have experienced, the more capable you would become of dealing with unexpected conditions. Therefore, if I’m asked whether I have some advice for our teaching, this is all I want to say—creating some chances for students to practice their interpreting theory and skills in the practical use. Possibly if will be a tough job, but it really can benefit students a lot!
.
姓名：严婷婷 学号：0812010007 班级：08英语1班
My Learning Feedback of the Interpreting Course
It’s really lucky for me to have taken the course of interpreting skills this term, because this course really benefits me a lot.
Above all, my listening skills have been improved to a much higher level than before through interpreting learning. We all know that, without a good listening to catch what the speakers say in source language, it would be impossible for us interpreters to transform it into the target language. Listening is the first and primary step for English learners to be a good interpreter. Keeping this realization in the mind, I pay my special attention to the study of listening. In the class, the routine of news listening always reminds me of the importance of listening towards this course. After class, I insist on spending one or two hours every day listening BBC, VOA, CNN, CRI or any other English resource I can get to practice English listening. With nearly a term’s perseverant efforts, you can imagine the progress that has been made. Nowadays, I have less difficulty in understanding what foreigners say in daily life. I can still follow speakers without referring to the Chinese translation when I watch movies. It is the Interpreting Course that pushes me to listen to English every day so as to avoid being rusty on the skills. I appreciate this class, not only because it helps to improve my listening ability, but also it makes me form a habit of listening to English every day. We are not English native speakers, so it is preeminently important for us learners to listen to it all the time so that we can immense ourselves in the atmosphere surrounded by English language. In the following days, the good habit will continue to accompany me. Keep listening, and I believe one day my listening skills will reach the level that a qualified interpreter should do.
The second benefit I have got from the class is the improvement of my spoken English. Admittedly, an interpreter must be bilingually capable of not only listening but also speaking. Interpreting requires you to express in target language what you’ve got from the source language on the basis of understanding. In this sense, only being a good listener is not enough at all. When I knew the fact in the first class of this course, I really felt a big challenge in front of me. Spoken English was always my strongest
weakpoint. Each time I tried to speak out English, the poor pronunciation and intonation can not be endured even by myself, still less by my listeners. So I chose to shut up my mouth. Avoid speaking it and then you would avoid discomfort and being frustrated by it, which was always the way I used to comfort myself before taking the class. However, things change now. The Interpreting Course is different from the courses we have learnt before. In the class of listening, reading, grammar and writing, most of the time is spent listening to the teachers’ speech and no one will blame you if you choose to be silent. In this course, however, you have to speak out English, whether you like it or not. At first, I was forced to speak English in the class. Gradually, I dared to practice interpreting and now I feel easy when hearing my own voice. Although my spoken English is far away from the requirements a good interpreter needs to meet, I am still pleased with the progress I’ve made now because I believe that “Well begun is half done” and “Practice makes perfect.”
The most important and direct harvest I achieve from the course is certainly the theory and skills of interpreting. The issues of how to take notes in interpretation, how to memorize the information and what manners interpreters should have are all covered in this course. A good mastery of these skills undoubtedly will smooth the way for interpreters to do their job.
However, there still exist some problems after taking the class.
Firstly, I find that different regional accents that English speakers have are the big obstacle for us English learners to overcome. We have indeed studied the foreign language for many years, but just focused on the standard English. So, when we listen to some non-standard English in our coursebook, we can hardly understand what the speakers are saying, not to mention interpret it. This gives us a reminder that you need to have a good mastery of different kinds of varieties of English, not just the Standard English if you as an interpreter want to perform well on different occasions.
Secondly, the huge psychology stress is also a big problem we always meet when interpreting. When we learn the course, actually, we do the job in an ideal environment. We just listen to the sound recordings and interpret to ourselves. What only matters is our professional skill. However, interpreting in the real situation is not
such a simple case at all. Psychology stress is a good example. The occasion, the persons you serve for, the atmosphere, all these things may cause your tension during your job and therefore bring a bad effect on your performance. Mistakes, embarrassment caused by stage fright occur very often. So, what we should do now to help us overcome psychology stress in the future’s interpreting job? Maybe, the best way is just to put yourself in the real situation. The more you have experienced, the more capable you would become of dealing with unexpected conditions. Therefore, if I’m asked whether I have some advice for our teaching, this is all I want to say—creating some chances for students to practice their interpreting theory and skills in the practical use. Possibly if will be a tough job, but it really can benefit students a lot!
.