Activities to Develop Critical Thinking in Interpreting Class
Activities that can be used in interpreting class to develop both interpreting skills and the six levels critical thinking skills:
- Remembering:
- retelling exercise——read paragraphs or play short audio/video clips for students to memorize and then retell in their own words;
- note-taking exercise——read paragraphs or play a short audio/video clips for students to take down the main idea with key words, signs and symbols;
- vocabulary brainstorming——give words in Chinese/English and students list the equivalent words in English/Chinese.
- Understanding:
- summarizing exercise—--read a short passage or play an audio/video speech for students to summarize the main idea;
- predicting exercise——read or show sentences or paragraphs with blanks for students to fill up according to context;
- paraphrasing exercise——give students sentences or paragraphs to paraphrase in source language or target language with elbow partners or group members.
- Applying
- public speaking practice——teach students skills and manners of public speaking , and then give topics to students to prepare and speak in front of the whole class;
- utilizing coping tactics ——teach students the common tactics to cope with difficulties during interpreting process and have students to utilize the coping tactics in real situations;
- utilizing paraphrasing skills——teach students paraphrasing skills such as changing part of speech, replacing synonym, changing sentence pattern, breaking long sentence into short ones, and have students utilize these skills during interpreting.
- Analyzing:
- explaining culture-specific terms——give culture-specific terms to students to explain in target language ;
- comparing different interpretation versions——have students compare different interpretation versions and discuss the merits and demerits of each versions;
- comparing source text & reference translation——have students compare the source text and reference translation and discuss the translation strategies.
- Evaluating
- peer evaluating——give rubrics to students to evaluate classmates' speaking and interpreting performance;
- self evaluating——require students to reflect their performance in simulative liaison interpreting or mock conference and write self-evalating report according given rubrics;
- writing retrospective report——require students to review their performance in simulative liaison interpreting or mock conference and write retrospective report with detailed analysis and self-evaluation.
- Creating:
- presentation——require students to search information and make presentation with PowerPoint to illustrate certain issues to develop skills of searching, selecting, organizing and public speaking;
- pair work / group work of impromptu speaking—--give optional topics to students to make impromptu speech to elbow partners or group members;
- simulative liaison interpreting——give detailed senarios to students to simulate conversations in certain situations and acting as the liaison interpreters;
- mock conference interpreting—--give topics and detailed background information to students to play the roles of host, speakers, journalists and interpreters in a mock press conference.