Teaching listening for interpreting through mind mapping
Students’ attitudes and its effectiveness
Interpreting scholars claim that mind mapping can be used pedagogically to enhance trainees’ interpreting-specific listening skills. However, so far relevant empirical studies have been rare. A single-group post and retrospective self-assessment design was used to examine student interpreters’ attitudes towards the use of mind mapping in teaching listening for interpreting and its effectiveness. Eighty-two students were involved as participants. An instruction experience questionnaire was administered at the end of the pedagogical intervention to examine their attitudes towards the mind mapping exercise. Two self-assessments of knowledge and skills were conducted at the end of the pedagogical intervention to investigate their pre-test post-test gains. One was a retrospective self-assessment about their competence before the exercise (then self-assessment) and the other was a post self-assessment about their competence after the exercise (now self-assessment). The results indicate that the participants perceived mind mapping as a positive learning experience and that it was effective in developing students’ interpreting-specific listening knowledge and skills.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature review
- 3.Using mind maps in teaching analytical listening for interpreting
- 3.1The listening component in interpreting
- 3.2Listening skills required on the part of interpreters
- 3.3The use of mind mapping to overcome students’ inadequate analytical listening skills
- 4.Contextualisation and instructional design
- 5.Methodology
- 5.1Research questions
- 5.2Participants
- 5.3Research design
- 5.4Instruments
- 5.5Data collection and analysis
- 6.Results and discussion
- 6.1Students’ attitudes
- 6.2Students’ assessment of the effectiveness of mind mapping
- 7.Conclusions
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References