MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT ------------------------------------------------------------------ TRAN THUY DUONG HOW TO IMPROVE SHORT-TERM MEMORY IN INTERPRETING SUPERVISOR: Mr. HOANG VAN HOAT, M.A HANOI - 2006 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF FIGURE. IV TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS .1 Background to the study. Aims of the Study.
Organization of the Thesis .3 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE. An overview of short - term memory. Definition of short - term memory. Major characteristics of short - term memory.
Differences between short-term memory and long-term memory. Short - term memory and interpreting:. An overview of interpreting. The stage of short - term memory in interpreting process.
Implications of short - term memory in interpreting process. Role of short - term memory in interpreting.15 CHAPTER III: THE STUDY OF SHORT-TERM MEMORY USAGE .2 Subject of the study.17 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Findings and discussions. The factual state of students’ use of short - term memory.
Difficulties encountered when using STM as an interpreting skill. The students’ practice of short - term memory improvement. The role of Teachers in STM Application for Students’ Interpreting skill.29 CHAPTER V: SUGGESTIONS OF USING SHORT-TERM MEMORY IN INTERPRETING. Suggested primary methods for short - term memory enhancement.
Auditory short - term memory improvement:. Visual short - term memory improvement. Suggested advanced methods for short - term memory improvement in interpreting. Retelling in source language.
Mnemonic to Memory:. Short - term memory exercises with inference:. Short-term Memory training for Forms of Source-language Utterances. 47 -i- TABLE OF FIGURE Figure 1: Information Processing Model.
5 Figure 2: Short - term memory Physiological Model. 6 Figure 3: Gile Model for Simultaneous Interpreting. 9 Figure 4: Gile Model for Consecutive Interpreting. Average time duration of source-language utterance.
Average length of information that can be remembered best. Times of listening needed to remember a piece of information. Time needed to rearrange information before interpreting. Time spent to forget information.
Self-evaluation of interpreting work. Types of information causing difficulty to remember. Reasons of difficulties in short - term memory. The Frequency of practicing short - term memory in interpreting.
The Methods adopted to practice short - term memory in interpreting. Aids/ Techniques supported for short - term memory when interpreting. The Efficiency of Short - term memory practice. 27 Figure 5: The frequency of the English teachers giving suggestions for students about STM 29 -ii- ABSTRACT This study investigated the Application of Short-term memory in the process of Interpreting, intended for the students of English Department, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies(HUFS) from the viewpoint of a forth year student of English Department, HUFS.
The paper aims at analyzing the benefits of using short-term memory for the purpose of effective interpreting study and more importantly, suggesting how to improve short-term memory in interpreting. In achieving these aims, the paper surveys the current situation of applying short-term memory in interpreting process. From received results, the paper argues the most practical implications for students, teachers and the library of HUFS with an aim to bettering the use of the short-term memory in study and practice of interpreting skill. -iii- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to convey my sincere thanks to my supervisor Mr.
Hoang Van Hoat, M.A, lecturer of the English Department, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, for his whole-hearted guidance and support. Without his valuable recommendations, this thesis cannot come to an end. My deepest gratitude also goes to all the teachers of English Department, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies. I would like to acknowledge the encouragement and strong support from my beloved family, especially my mother.
Without their great love and dedication, this paper would not be translated into reality. I also want to express my deepest appreciation to my classmates and friends for their heart-felt assistance and encouragement. Finally, I would like to extend my special thanks to the National Library, the Library of Hanoi University of Foreign Studies for providing me authentic and up-to-date information resources for the fulfillment of this paper. -iv- TABLE OF ABBREVIATIONS STM Short-term memory LTM Long-term memory PC Processing capacity CI Consecutive interpreting SI Simultaneous interpreting EVS Ear-voice span NP Noun phrase PP Preposition phrase -v- CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study Memory is one of the major elements affecting the process of storing and conveying information.
Lack of mnemonic capacities may prevent people from getting access to sources of information quickly and exactly. However, due to the brain formation, human cannot remember everything they have heard or read which is likely to be too complicated or not necessary for a long-term use. In this approach, the role of short- term memory is demonstrated and amplified to encourage the best use of memory. Short-term memory is present not only as a need but also as a must for academic learners in general and students of language studies in particular.
The target set by English Department is to produce proficient translators and interpreters after four years of academic training. Therefore, translation and interpretation are regarded as the most essential and principal skills that students should acquire. Because of the limited teaching periods provided in curriculum and students’ motivation, it is absolutely necessary to take up short-term memory training of interpretation skill. Under the condition of communication demands, interpreting becomes an important requirement in most of activities.
The two main types of interpreting: consecutive interpreting and simultaneous interpreting both need a very short while to understand provided information, rearrange materials and render into target language. Needless to say, only by taking advantages of short-term memory can interpreters fulfill their task. Many interpreters can aware the role of short-term memory in interpreting, however, some of them are able to use it effectively. Young interpreters at entry levels, in fact, often find it difficult to address memory problems in practice.
A question is raised for the better application of short - term memory in interpreting. “Inability to store a certain amount of information for a short time leads the interpreter to inaccurately turn the source story into another language” (Carroll, 2005). How to make the best use of short - term memory to facilitate language learning is an issue considered in many eloquent articles and publications. -1- In the process of interpretation learning, recognizing the usefulness of short - term memory as a tool to enhance the language acquisition and the challenges posed to my peer learners of utilizing this helpful tool, I strongly desire to help the students in English Department in exploiting more techniques from short - term memory.
Therefore, this thesis was conducted to evaluate the importance of short - term memory as a coping tactic in interpretation. Besides, I also want to investigate the current situation of applying short - term memory in the process of interpreting study and difficulties English students may encounter when applying short - term memory. Hence, a number of practical implications are given for students, teachers and library of HUFS and a list of basic and advanced techniques are presented with an aim to helping English students achieve the highest efficiency of exploiting short - term memory for learning purposes. Although much has been written and many claims have been made about the use of short - term memory in an educational context, there is still not much evidence that supports these claims.
Therefore, the thesis is vital that the most effective way should be introduced to help users obtain short - term memory’s advantages. That is, awareness of what short - term memory is about, what the factors regulating it are, what causes remembering and forgetting, and what might cause short - term memory to weaken help interpreters to develop mnemonic capacities. With this regard, the objective of this thesis is to suggest the students of English Department how to use short - term memory in the most useful way for the purpose of interpreting practice. Aims of the Study The main aim of this thesis is to introduce the benefits of short - term memory for interpreting study and practice and more importantly, presenting the students of English Department in HUFS the most practical implications of using short - term memory in support of effective interpreting.
However, despite the awareness of short - term memory’s importance in interpreting, this type of memory are not likely to be useful unless the students can locate them and know how to exploit the skill in the most effective way. The degree to which short - term memory is useful in interpreting depends fundamentally on how well its implication found match the needs of the -2- students and their ability level. Hence, the students’ short - term memory skill plays significant role in their efficiency of using related techniques as a learning tool. Furthermore, it is noted to find out students’ overall perception and motivation of choosing short - term memory to improve their interpreting skills.
Moreover, the comprehension of teachers about short - term memory and their role as the supporters for students also are marked as an important factor for the effective STM utilization. In this regard, I have designed this survey to find out the current situation of English students on their way of using short - term memory as the assistant for the interpreting study and to propose some suggestions to deal with this circumstance. The overall purpose of this survey is to investigate the following issues: (1) The factual state of students’ use of short - term memory; (2) The difficulties when short - term memory is used as a interpreting skill; (3) The students’ practice to improve short - term memory; and (4) The role of the teachers in short - term memory application for students’ interpreting skills. Organization of the Thesis The thesis starts with Chapter I, providing the background and organization of the study, followed by Chapter II, introducing the general concept of short - term memory and its impact on the process of mastering interpretation skill.
In Chapter III, the study with a specified methodology to access the theme of thesis is clarified, which providing academic foundation for a survey conducted to investigate the current situation of using short - term memory for language learning among English students of HUFS in Chapter IV. The thesis ends with Chapter V: some suggestions of improving STM in interpreting and a brief conclusion for the whole work. Additionally, found in Appendices are a catalog of recommended websites, tests as well extra exercises for short - term memory training to help students solve short - term memory dilemmas. -3- CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.
An overview of short - term memory 2. Definition of short - term memory Short - term memory, sometime referred to as “primary” or “active” memory, is the part of memory which stores a limited amount of information for a limited amount of time , roughly 15-30 seconds (Zhong, 2001). In general, psychological studies has shown that the idea of short-term memory means the reader/ listener retains information for a short period without creating the neural mechanism for later recall. That is, short - term memory is a system for temporarily storing and managing information required to carry complex cognitive memory.
The information held in short - term memory may be: (1) Recently processed sensory input; (2) Items recently retrieved from long-term memory; (3) The results of recent mental processing. Such information is involved in short - term memory in three basic processes (Mayer, 2003) comprised of Selecting1, Organizing2 and Integrating3. From the linguistic perspective, this paper limits itself to the definition of “short - term memory … has a very limited duration.