An Investigation into Students’ Perceptions of the Effects of Speakers’ Kinesics and Fast Speed on the Quality of Simultaneous Interpretation: The Case of Senior Students Majoring in English Translation and Interpretation

Abstract

This descriptive study aimed to investigate the two factors influencing the quality of SI namely (1) speakers’ kinesics and (2) speakers’ fast speed. The effects of speakers’ fast speed and five types of speakers’ kinesics including (1) emotional expressions, (2) regulators, (3) adaptors, (4) illustrators, and (5) emblems were analyzed by the three criteria of the quality of SI: (1) sense of consistency, (2) logical cohesion, and (3) fluency of delivery suggested by Zwischenberger (2010). 51 students majoring in English Translation and Interpretation at the School of Foreign Languages, in Can Tho University were asked to answer the 5-point Likert scale questionnaire with 30 items, and then the quantitative data was analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 26). Two major findings were found from the students’ perspectives. Firstly, students agreed that speakers’ kinesics had positive impacts on the quality of SI. Particularly, emotional expressions were the most positively affected type of kinesics. While emotional expressions, regulators, illustrators, and emblems had positive impacts on the quality of SI, adaptors had no significantly positive or negative impacts on the quality of SI. Secondly, students agreed that speakers’ fast speed had negative impacts on the quality of SI. These findings suggested that lecturers should utilize materials containing speakers’ kinesics and slow or normal speed in training to support students’ performance of practicing, and students should practice more with videos on channels of youtube or from other sources which have more speakers’ kinesics and slow, normal or gradually to fast speed so that they could familiarize themselves with SI gradually.