Public speaking training for interpreting students: its effectiveness in improving consecutive interpreting performance

Aiming to address the issue of improving students’ consecutive interpreting (CI) performance, this thesis proposes a course titled Public Speaking Training for Interpreting Students (PSTIS) by using a hybrid approach of component-skill and holistic training and incorporating relevant activities and exercises in non-interpreting fields.

Based on this course, the research conducted in this thesis investigated the effect of public speaking training on students’ CI performance in terms of pitch and volume, intonation, pause, posture and gestures, and eye contact. To achieve this goal, trainee subjects (N=3) were recruited to participate in PSTIS and discuss their learning outcomes. Additionally, a pretest-posttest experiment was carried out to further reveal the extent to which their CI performances were improved based on the comparison with those of untrained subjects (N=2).