Journal of Education and Human Development

Why Prosody Awareness Training is Necessary in Training Future Interpreters
Mahmood Yenkimaleki

Abstract
Establishing a comprehensive rules and guidelines for speech production and teaching of prosody is difficult compared with the specific second language learner problem in pronunciation which can be easily corrected in second language learning classrooms. The nature of prosodic features is inherently complicated and because of the complexity of prosodic feature errors, no specific teaching methodology deals with them appropriately and most of the teaching methods are focused on segmental aspects in second language learner’s pronunciation problems. Despite the helpfulness of computer-aided analysis of voice characteristics, there should be cooperation with experts in voice and signal processing in getting conclusions about these aspects. The teaching of prosody should be of the utmost importance in the interpreter training curriculum. Also, in this respect, appropriate materials and data should be chosen carefully according to the mother tongue of the learners and the analysis of the data should be done by professionals to see the gaps in the teaching and students’ learning processes. The choice of methodology in the teaching of prosody can be important aspect as well. It should target individual differences between learners in different contexts. This study concluded that the curriculum of interpreting needs modification and – depending on the different types of languages involved – prosodic feature awareness training should be included in the curriculum of the training of future interpreters. So, it demands that instructors, who are the models in most cases for the interpreter trainees, be conscious and proficient enough in the perception and production of prosodic features of the language(s) that they are working with.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jehd.v5n1a26