Effects of prosody awareness training on the intelligibility of Iranian interpreter trainees in English

Abstract

The present study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the intelligibility of speech produced by Iranian interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level. Participants took a pretest of speaking skills before starting the program so that their speech intelligibility level was rated. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, discussed issues in the movies in pairs in the classroom. The experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills so that the effect of treatment on the intelligibility of their speech could be assessed. The results show that the prosody awareness training significantly improved the students’ speech intelligibility.

Prosody training benefits in perception vs. production skills in simultaneous interpreting: an experimental study

“…Nonnative pronunciation is perceived in the production of both segmentals and suprasegmentals in L2 speech, it contributes to the perception of foreign accent, and it may lower intelligibility or comprehensibility in speech (Kang et al, 2010;Munro & Derwing, 2008). Additionally, nonnative production of suprasegmentals appears to be more detrimental than segmental errors in L2 comprehensibility and intelligibility perception (Field, 2005;Kang et al, 2010;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a). To help L2 learners with these problems, training studies have proven to be beneficial in speech perception/production (Gordon et al, 2013;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a, 2019c.…”

“…Additionally, nonnative production of suprasegmentals appears to be more detrimental than segmental errors in L2 comprehensibility and intelligibility perception (Field, 2005;Kang et al, 2010;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a). To help L2 learners with these problems, training studies have proven to be beneficial in speech perception/production (Gordon et al, 2013;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a, 2019c.…”

“…Also, the rhythmic structure in Farsi is syllable timed, and in English it is stress timed (for details of prosody differences between English and Farsi see Yenkimaleki, 2016). It has been shown before that a closer approximation of the prosody of native English yields better intelligibility and comprehensibility of non-native speech (e.g., Saito & Saito, 2016;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a, 2019b. In a recent study by the present author it was shown that prosody training program was successful in boosting the quality of the speech output in so-called inverse consecutive interpreting, i.e., from native Farsi into nonnative English (Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2018).…”

“…The key to building simultaneous interpreting expertise lies in improving the efficiency of the interpreter's perception and production skills to facilitate the communication of the message (e.g., Hu, 2010;Qianxi & Liang, 2019). The previous research (e.g., Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven, 2019a, 2020 has shown that prosody training enhances the quality of consecutive interpreting performance. The effect of prosody training on simultaneous interpreting performance has not been studied systematically.…”

Developing Listening Comprehension Skills by Interpreter Trainees Through Prosody Teaching: Does Methodology Make a Difference?

“…This has resulted in an increased importance of the role of prosody in the comprehensibility of native and non-native speech (Anderson-Hsieh et al 1992;Munro & Derwing 1999), that prosodic features often producing promising results in speech recognition (Anderson-Hsieh et al 1992;Benrabah 1997;Hutchinson 1973;Tiffen 1992). In fact, inappropriate timing and stress patterns are often pointed as the main reasons of intelligibility problems (Adams 1979;Hahn 1999Hahn , 2004Kenworthy 1987;Nelson 1982;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven 2017a) or unnaturalness (Ono 1991;Yenkimaleki & Van Heuven 2017a,b;Yenkimaleki et al 2017).…”