Disfluencies in Consecutive Interpreting among Undergraduates in the Language Lab Environment in the final version

Disfluencies in Consecutive Interpreting among Undergraduates in the Language Lab Environment1 Kexiu Yin College of Education, De La Salle University 2401 Taft Avenue, Manila, 1004, Philippines yinkexiu@gmail.com Abstract: Consecutive interpreting (CI) has gained increasing popularity and application in today’s world. Fluency is a criterion for CI output assessment. Although disfluencies among CI professionals were investigated in previous studies, little research has been done on the disfluency prevalence among CI undergraduate learners. Nor is the advantage of the language lab facilities studied in terms of helping beginning learners to improve speech fluency. Based on the analysis of 28 recorded CI outputs produced by students in a Chinese university, this paper attempts to identify clearly the frequencies of difluencies. The results show that the problems of overusing fillers and repeated words may be prevalent among CI beginning learners, while notable pause seems to be better controlled in the language lab environment. Then, the causes of the difluencies are explored and pedagogical suggestions are offered. Keywords: Consecutive interpreting, pause, fillers, repetition, language lab Introduction Consecutive interpreting (CI) is “a process in which adequate information is orally presented and transferred into another linguistic and cultural system” (Hu, 2006, p. 3). Among the forms of interpreting, e.g. simultaneous interpreting (SI) featured by the dependence on high-tech booth facilities and remote interpreting (RI) featured by the reliance on high speed internet connection, CI is the most frequently adopted for its low cost and moderate requirement on technical support. It is applied in interpreter-on-site business negotiations, press conferences, parent teacher meetings, interviews, and individual consultations. Responding to the increasing social demand for CI interpreters and English users of certain CI skills, a number of universities and colleges in China have offered CI as a compulsory core course for English majors. In the assessment of CI output, fluency is an important criterion. Since CI output can be regarded as a natural speech delivered in the form of the target language and featured by spontaneous production, CI researchers share the findings on fluency in natural speech studies. Although categorized as disfluencies (Engelhardt et al., 2010; MacGregor et al., 2009; Corley & Stewart, 2008; Shriberg, 1999; Clark & Wasow, 1998), pause, fillers and repetition are by no means tantamount to fluency hindrance. Studies have shown that pause, fillers and repetition may help smooth speech, facilitate understanding and serve different communicative functions (Brennan & Schober, 2001, in Xu, 2010; Tissi, 2000; Hieke, 1981). Further, Clark & Tree (2002) propose moving the status of the fillers um and uh toward that of an interjection. The positive role of disfluecies in spontaneous speech is undeniable. However, it is also beyond dispute that disfluencies impair speech fluency when they exceed acceptable limits. Goffman states that 1 Acknowledgements I owe my thanks to the School of Foreign Languages, Yunnan University, China for the support of the study. I am also thankful to Professor Leonisa A. Mojica at De La Salle University-Manila and three anonymous reviewers of PACLIC 25 for their insightful comments and suggestions. Any …

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