An Action Research Project for Interpreter Training Courses

Abstract

One of the aims of college interpreter training courses is to improve not merely students' English proficiency, but also skills necessary to become interpreters. To seek for these aims, this time, role play was introduced to author's courses as part of an action research project. 'Action research' is an approach to research in context which uses the interactive steps of planning, acting on the plan, observing and reflecting in order to bring about improvement in classes (Kemmis and Mctaggart 5). The students played the roles of native speaker of English, interpreter, and audience by turns. The students' reactions to the role-playing were in general very good. Most of them said that this practice was very challenging and that they learned quite a lot by acting as an interpreter and observing others' performances.