Effects of three tasks on interpreting fluency

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of three fluency-enhancing activities on interpreting learners’ performance. Four groups of students took part in the experiment. They were assigned to one of the four task conditions: pre-task planning, task repetition, formulae acquisition, and a control group. A temporal approach was adopted to measure fluency, which was divided into three dimensions: speed fluency, breakdown fluency and repair fluency. Nine temporal measures were used to measure these three aspects as well as overall fluency. Results supported a clear fluency effect of task repetition while effects of pre-task planning and formulaic sequences were not decisive. Levelt’s speech production model was used to account for effects of fluency-enhancing tasks.

KEYWORDS:

• Fluency-enhancing activities
• fluency training
• planning
• formulaic language
• task repetition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China [grant number 20720181002].