Exploring the Relationship Between Interpreting Students’ Online Strategy Use and Instructors’ Recommendations: A Longitudinal, Mixed-Methods Study

Abstract

Online strategies, used during the interpreting process, are crucial for interpreting performance and constitute an important component of interpreter education, yet little is known about whether students use these strategies as recommended by instructors. This study tracked the use of online strategies by 53 first-year interpreting students in consecutive interpreting from L2 to L1 over one academic year and compared their use to recommendations provided by 30 instructors. While students’ strategy use at neither the beginning nor the end of the year correlated significantly with instructors’ recommendations, the recommendations significantly explained changes in students’ strategy use over time. To explore other factors shaping students’ strategy use, we first examined the relationship between their strategy use and L2 proficiency to isolate the influence of general language proficiency. Upon finding significant correlations, we conducted interviews with the relatively L2-proficient students. The interviews identified four cognitive factors (e.g., context comprehension and utilization, rendition efficiency, coordination between note-taking and source language comprehension), two affective factors (i.e., interpreting anxiety, learning motivation), and two external factors (e.g., rating criteria) that influenced students’ strategy selection and use frequency. These findings indicate the need for strategy instruction that extends beyond prescriptive recommendations to incorporate individual cognitive-affective factors and external variables.