Undergraduate Consecutive Interpreting and Lexical Knowledge

Abstract

With a decreasing number of students enrolling on undergraduate courses in foreign languages in the UK, universities have a smaller pool of students from which to recruit. Many of these applicants come with poor foreign language skills. These weaknesses, which are prevalent in formal spoken registers, are particularly noticeable in those degree programmes containing interpreting modules – for these require a high level of competence in the students ’ foreign language(s) as well as their mother tongue. This paper suggests that undergraduate interpreter training should address both the need to acquire interpreting skills and to enhance students’ foreign language competence. It reports on the findings from an empirical case study based on the BACKBONE corpus. Over a six-week period, eight English and German native speakers used corpus-based exercises to practise interpreting and to learn terminology related to education. Students’ interpreting competence and lexical knowledge were tested at the start and end of the study. The findings indicate that those who engaged more with the materials made greater improvements in lexical knowledge in both the terminology and interpreting tests.