Teaching interpretation 1 at school of foreign languages: A brief evaluation and some activity examples

ISSN: 1859-2171 TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 23 
TEACHING INTERPRETATION 1 AT SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES: 
A BRIEF EVALUATION AND SOME ACTIVITY EXAMPLES 
Tran Thi Thu Trang 
TNU School of Foreign Languages 
ABSTRACT 
Interpretation courses have a significant role in many language training programs at universities in 
Vietnam. However, there are few useful materials and research into this subject. The author 
conducted a qualitative research project to see how it was designed and taught at the School of 
Foreign Languages. The researcher compared and analysed the course syllabus with NAATI test 
format, used a questionnaire and observed teachers’ classes to collect data. The findings showed a 
mismatch between the course’s important position and the standards by NAATI as well as the 
teaching methods demonstrated by the teachers. They were not effective in their classroom 
activities and did not equip their students with necessary skills to learn the subject well. The author 
also recommended some class activity examples to addess some of the problematic issues stated in 
the findings. 
Key words: interpretation; qualitative research; teaching methods; skills; activity examples 
Received: 15/4/2019; Revised: 13/5/2019; Approved: 15/5/2019 
GIẢNG DẠY MÔN PHIÊN DỊCH 1 TẠI KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ: 
ĐÁNH GIÁ TỔNG QUAN VÀ ĐỀ XUẤT HOẠT ĐỘNG 
Trần Thị Thu Trang 
Khoa Ngoại ngữ - ĐH Thái Nguyên 
TÓM TẮT 
Các khóa học phiên dịch đóng vai trò quan trọng trong nhiều chương trình đào tạo ở các trường đại 
học Việt Nam; tuy nhiên, có rất ít các tài liệu và nghiên cứu về lĩnh vực này. Tác giả đã thực hiện 
một nghiên cứu định tính nhằm tìm hiểu khóa học phiên dịch được thiết kế và giảng dạy tại Khoa 
Ngoại ngữ như thế nào. Tác giả so sánh và phân tích đề cương của khóa học với bài kiểm tra 
chuẩn quốc tế NAATI, sử dụng bảng câu hỏi và dự giờ giáo viên để thu thập dữ liệu. Các kết quả 
nghiên cứu cho thấy sự không tương thích giữa tầm quan trọng của khóa học với các chuẩn của 
NAATI và phương pháp lên lớp của giảng viên. Các giảng viên chưa trang bị cho sinh viên các kỹ 
năng cần thiết của môn học. Tác giả đồng thời đề xuất một số hoạt động áp dụng trong lớp học khi 
giảng dạy môn học này. 
Từ khóa: phiên dịch; nghiên cứu định tính; phương pháp giảng dạy; kỹ năng; hoạt động ví dụ 
Ngày nhận bài: 15/4/2019; Ngày hoàn thiện: 13/5/2019; Ngày duyệt đăng: 15/5/2019 
Email: tranthutrang.sfl@tnu.edu.vn 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.2019.06.673 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 24 
1. Introduction 
Interpretation is a compulsory subject in 
many universities’ curriculum whose training 
program is to provide the labor market with 
interpreters, translators or officers working 
for international and foreign-related 
organizations. Since Vietnam became a 
member of the World Trade Organization in 
2007, the need for translators and interpreters 
has greatly increased. These people have an 
important role in bridging the gap of 
communication for different situations as 
Newmark (2003) [1] stated “there is no 
communication without translation”. 
Currently about sixty universities in Vietnam 
include translation and interpretation subjects 
in their curriculum for students [2]. This 
shows that educational institutions have 
realized the vital contribution of this 
emerging field and changed the belief that 
those who can speak English can interpret [3]. 
Despite its essential position in the 
curriculum, teachers of this field encounter a 
number of challenges in teaching this subject. 
First, textbooks and other related resources 
are not available in both domestic and 
international markets. Teachers then use their 
own experience in designing materials for in-
class use. Some existing course books about 
interpreting are not appropriate for the context 
of Vietnam; there is not enough input for the 
Vietnamese-English interpreting practices. 
The practices for English-Vietnamese 
interpretation are not in levels, i.e. for pre-
intermediate or advanced learners; therefore, 
they may be either too easy or too tough. 
Moreover, there are few domestic seminars 
and conferences in this field for teachers to 
share their expertise and experience in 
teaching interpretation. It seems each 
university has its own model in teaching the 
subject. Finally, not all interpreting teachers 
are officially trained to teach the subject. 
According to Nguyen (2016) [2], only some 
big institutions like Hanoi University, College 
of Foreign Languages – Da Nang University 
have sent their teachers abroad for attending 
short courses about interpretation and how to 
teach it. Lecturers at the School of Foreign 
Languages – Thai Nguyen University (SFL-
TNU), in particular, also encounter the above 
mentioned obstacles. 
From these observations, the author finds it 
necessary to conduct a brief evaluation on 
how the teachers at SFL teach the subject, and 
suggest some activity examples to partly fill 
the pool of methodologies for this difficult 
area. The research was conducted to find 
answers to this question: “How is English 
Interpretation 1 designed and taught at SFL?” 
In the next parts, a short description of how 
the study is conducted, the findings and some 
activity examples will be presented. 
2. Interpretation 1 at SFL – The context 
At SFL-TNU, students study interpretation 
courses in two semesters when they are in 
their third year. Each subject has three credits 
and is taught within fifteen weeks. SFL 
students only learn the consecutive type of 
interpretation due to the lack of facilities and 
resources for other types such as simultaneous 
or cabin interpretation. Even though the 
school installed some multimedia rooms with 
computers and Internet connections, there are 
not enough technicians to assist teachers; 
therefore, they prefer to choose the traditional 
classroom where they use laptops and 
speakers as the main teaching tools. In 
Interpretation 1, the teachers use dialogues of 
various contexts and topics about everyday 
life such as talking about an itinerary, at a 
pharmacy, attending a meeting, visiting a 
farm etc. to train students’ short term 
memory. They are not allowed to take notes, 
but rely on their brain to retain information. 
For their end-of-term exams, students are 
allowed to listen to some talks once and listen 
again to interpret in turns. Their performance 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 25 
is assessed basing on the following criteria: 
fluency, accuracy and comprehension. Each 
year the school offers this course to about one 
hundred students; however, there are only 
three lecturers in charge of this subject, and 
none of them had official interpreting training 
courses when they were at universities. 
3. Methodology 
The study was carried out among 60 students 
of English whose major is English language 
bachelors. These are juniors who were taking 
Interpretation 1 (Oral Translation 1) in their 
fifth academic term. The researcher employed 
a number of methods to collect the data. First, 
a comparison between the course contents 
stated in its syllabus and test formats decided 
by an Australian company named NAATI 
(National Accreditation Authority for 
Translators and Interpreters) was analysed. 
Second, the researcher constructed a 
questionnaire including three parts on Google 
Form. Part 1 comprises 5 questions focusing 
on students’ perceptions of the course 
position. Part 2 has 10 items targeting at the 
teachers’ methodologies in class. These 
questions were adapted from the Teaching 
Behaviours Inventory [4]. The students 
expressed their opinions by choosing an 
appropriate option from five numbers (1= 
should significantly increase, 2= should 
slightly increase, 3= no change needed, 4= 
should slightly decrease, 5= should 
significantly decrease). In the last part, the 
students had to write an overall evaluation on 
their end-of-term exam. The last measure is 
class observation. The first one was done at 
the beginning of the semester, and the second 
one was conducted at week 10 when students 
had finished two thirds of their course and 
were preparing for the next progress test. The 
aims of observing classes were to find out 
what activities were exploited and see how 
the students performed class learning tasks. 
This result would strengthen what the 
students had stated in their questionnaire. 
The link to the questionnaire was sent to the 
students via their Facebook groups, and the 
researcher received 52 responses after 5 days. 
The responding rate was 86.7%, which is an 
acceptable result for analysing and 
generalizing the research findings. 
4. Results 
4.1. A comparison between NAATI test 
formats and the course contents 
According to NAATI Information Booklet 
2016 [5], the test for para-professional 
interpreters has three sections. Section 1 is 
about social and cultural awareness (5 marks). 
This section has questions to assess 
applicants’ understanding of how socio- 
cultural factors affect situations where an 
interpreter would be used. Section 2 (5 marks) 
tests the ethics of the profession to see if 
applicants understand the code of ethics and 
the professional conduct. The third section 
(90 marks) assesses applicant’s ability to be a 
bridge of communication for two people 
speaking different languages. There are two 
dialogues of 300 words with relatively simple 
information exchanged. Applicants interpret 
each segment of about 35 words with 
reasonable accuracy, style and register. The 
test for professional interpreters is more 
complicated. Applicants perform in two 
sections. In section 1, they have to interpret 
two dialogues (600 words in length, 60 words 
per segment); they then answer questions 
related to social and cultural awareness, 
which is followed by two questions related to 
the dialogues. After that, they see two texts of 
about 200 words each and translate them into 
a target language. In section 2, applicants do 
consecutive interpreting. They listen to some 
passages and interpret almost immediately. 
Sharing some commonalities with NAATI 
test format, the key contents of Interpretation 
1 describe the code of ethics for interpreters, 
and emphasize concentration/memory. The 
latter one, however, is not practical as it is 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 26 
merely about the major characteristics of 
short term memory; its role and its 
implications in interpreting process. There are 
no activities or strategies for improving short-
term memory for students. For the progress 
tests and end-of-term exam, students come to 
the testing room, listen to two dialogues in 
both English and Vietnamese and interpret. 
From this analysis, it can be seen that despite 
the shared features of the course and what is 
considered standards by NAATI, 
Interpretation 1 should have included other 
important factors which NAATI looks into 
such as social and cultural awareness and the 
code of ethic. These should be explicitly 
presented in the tests or exams for students. 
4.2. Students’ perceptions on the position of 
the subject 
One hundred per cent of the students agreed 
that Interpretation 1 (Oral translation 1) is a 
compulsory subject as it prepares them with 
necessary skills for their future jobs. Unlike 
other subjects which only centre around 
developing students’ language proficiency, 
this course trains them to have knowledge on 
a variety of topics, to master in skills related 
to their reactions, their short term memory 
beside improving their English listening and 
speaking abilities. 47 students (90.3%) 
indicated that three credits for this subject are 
enough and that three hours for in-class 
contact per week is appropriate. This maybe 
because they had to study about five to six 
other subjects, so this design for 
Interpretation will spare them some time to 
fulfil other courses. All of the students chose 
“disagree” when they were asked if they 
wanted to replace this subject by Translation 
courses where they study the written form of 
a text and write their translation output. 
Another noticeable finding is all of them were 
not introduced to NAATI during their study 
of the course. 
From these answers, we can see that the 
students were fully aware of the important 
role of this course and they supported SFL in 
allocating the course in its curriculum. This 
attitude may then affect their motivation and 
strategies in learning the subject. 
4.3. Teachers’ teaching methodologies 
Table 1 shows the students’ responses to 
statements related to the teachers’ 
methodologies in teaching Interpretation 1. 
Table 1. Students’ evaluation on teachers’ methodologies 
Statements 1 2 3 
1. The teacher introduced the course syllabus in details. 100% 
2. The teacher gave clear instructions on how to use course book or 
reference materials for self-study. 
58% 42% 
3. The teacher provided materials for students to prepare for the next 
class. 
100% 
4. The teacher provided vocabulary according to topics/ categories. 96.1% 3.9% 
5. The teacher used a variety of activities in teaching. 76.9% 23.1% 
6. The teacher focused on training students’ short term memory. 88.5% 11.5 % 
7. The teacher focused on training students’ reaction ability. 67.3% 7.8% 24.9% 
8. The teacher divided segments for interpretation equally. 86.5% 13.5% 
9. The teacher used a variety of topics for interpreting practices. 5.8% 94.2% 
10. The teacher encouraged pair and group work in interpretation. 80.7% 19.3% 
The figures shown in this table indicate significant information about how students judged their 
teachers’ teaching methods. Firstly, the areas that were highly appreciated with almost 100% of 
the students were the detailed introduction of the course syllabus and the use of various topics for 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
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students to practise. As a requirement from 
the board of managers, teachers at the 
beginning of a semester must provide a 
course syllabus so that students know what 
they are doing during the course. The topics 
as stated in the syllabus are all different for 
each week; therefore, when the teacher 
strictly followed the plan, students would be 
exposed to a number of familiar 
talks/dialogues. Apart from these two good 
aspects, the students had negative opinions 
towards several points. The first, and the most 
noticeable one was the materials provided for 
preparation prior to coming to the next class. 
100% of the students claimed that the 
teachers should significantly increase this act. 
The fact is if they did not know what they 
would study next, they would be passive in 
looking for appropriate contents, knowledge 
related to culture and society for their 
interpretation. This may result in their 
unreadiness to participate in the lesson. 
Moreover, the teachers did not provide 
vocabulary according to themes/topics/ 
categories with 96.1% choosing number 1. 
The fact is if the students could have their 
own little glossary book, their revision of 
useful words/expressions would be more 
efficient. Regarding the key skills that the 
students were supposed to master, which are 
short-term memory and reaction ability, most 
of them pointed out that their teachers did not 
invest the right amount of time to instruct. It 
seems the students were not trained with 
techniques to retain information in their 
memory for a short span of time. Likewise, 
more than half (67.3%) of the participants 
stated that they needed more practices to 
improve their reaction. Real experience from 
interpreters around the world has proved that 
being able to deal with the existing situations 
while interpreting contributes greatly to their 
success or failures [6]. In terms of in-class 
activities, three fourths (80.7%) of the 
respondents claimed that their teachers mostly 
requested for individual work rather than 
pairs or groups. A similar number of students 
(76.9%) said that the class activities are 
monotonous. If the teachers only used “listen 
and repeat”, “listen and memorize”, “listen 
and interpret”, their teaching procedure would 
be repetitive and probably be demotivating to 
their learners. 
The investigation into the students’ evaluation 
on teachers’ methodologies has pointed out a 
number of problems in teaching the subject. 
Despite the significance of the subject, there 
is a mismatch between what is expected and 
what really happened. 
4.4. Students’ attitudes towards the exam 
Screening the students’ summary of their 
attitudes towards the exam, some 
predicaments stood out. First, they did not 
know what topics they would interpret, so 
there was a high level of anxiety for the test 
takers. Furthermore, the topics of the tests 
were not the same as the ones they had 
studied before. Hence, when the audio was 
played, they were put in a shocking status 
even though difficult vocabulary was 
provided to them before listening. Another 
problem was the students had never seen their 
teachers analyse and mark their interpretation 
using a rubric of assessment; therefore, they 
didn’t know what to do. Overall, this subject 
was considered as a pressure for them. 
4.5. Class observation 
The researcher’s notes revealed the same 
results found in the students’ questionnaire. In 
both of the observations, the teachers started 
their lesson by checking homework, then 
taught new vocabulary for the new 
interpretation. There were no lead-in or 
warm-up activities. They also followed a 
sequence in teaching: students listened for the 
first time – teachers paused the audio – 
students interpreted – teachers gave feedback. 
The class atmostphere was quiet and boring; 
few students volunteered to answer. 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
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These observations have shown a correlation 
between what the students expressed in their 
questionnaire and what happened in class. 
5. Class activity examples 
To address the issues of monotony, the lack 
of group work and to better instruct students 
to work on their own, the following activities 
can be applied by teachers of Interpretation 1. 
5.1. News sharing 
News is a rich source for both in-class and 
after-class practices. Teachers can exploit this 
channel to set up a good habit for students. 
* Aims: this activity helps learners to 
- practise listening skills every week 
- update their understanding about social and 
cultural knowledge 
- expand their vocabulary in different fields 
- practise interpreting ability 
* Procedure: on week 1 of the course, 
teachers introduce some useful news websites 
for students such as: https://www.news 
inlevels.com/;https://breakingnewsenglish.co
m/; https://tuoitrenews.vn/; https://edition. 
cnn.com/cnn10;https://www.sciencenewsforst
udents.org/ etc. Students then choose a 
partner to work with and decide on one piece 
of news to read or listen to. After that, they 
both construct a summary of the news and 
interpret it into the target language. In class, 
teachers pick one pair of students to perform 
their preparation; one student reports the 
contents of what they read or listened to, the 
other interprets after two sentences by the 
first student. Teachers should remind their 
students that they may start with their topics 
of interests first, but after that they need to 
cover other topics to have a wider pool of 
useful vocabulary. 
5.2. Running interpretation 
The American Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention found positive associations 
between classroom-based physical activity 
and indicators of cognitive skills and 
attitudes, academic behavior, and academic 
achievement (McCaughey, K. 2018) [7]. This 
is to say that teachers should involve physical 
movement for their students while learning. 
* Aims: this activity helps learners to: 
- move and learn at the same time 
- interpret in a fun and competitive way 
- collaborate as a group. 
* Procedure: After preparing ideas and 
necessary knowledge for the output, students 
stand in groups on one side of the class. 
Teachers write the word “Finish” on the 
board. Teachers then play the audio and pause 
after each segment of two to three sentences. 
Groups discuss their interpretation and put up 
their hand to win the turn to translate. Each 
correct translation will give the group a 
chance to send one member to the Finish area. 
The group with all members at the Finish 
position will win. 
5.3. Interpreting with a phone 
Most students nowadays use smartphones, 
and teachers can take advantage of this device 
to teach. 
* Aims: this activity helps students to 
- collaborate in groups 
- practise their interpreting skills 
* Procedure: students are divided into groups 
of three or four. Teachers play the audio and 
pause after each segment, groups discuss their 
interpretation. They then take turn recording 
their translation on their mobile phones. 
Teachers may play their recordings through a 
speaker when they finish. 
6. Conclusion 
The research findings have exposed some 
uncorrelations between the essential position 
of the course and the reality of teaching this 
subject. Despite the fact that Interpretation 
courses are the core of SFL training 
programs, the teachers responsible for this 
Tran Thi Thu Trang TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 23 - 29 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 29 
subject encountered a lot of challenges. First, 
they had no coursebook to officially use in 
class. Second, maybe because no one of them 
was trained to be interpreters or had real 
experience of working in this field, their 
teaching methods did not meet the need of 
their students. SFL should really look into 
these problems and have policies/plans for its 
teachers to improve their knowledge and 
methods of teaching this subject. 
REFERENCES 
[1]. Newmark, P., “No Global Communication 
without Translation” in Anderman, Gunilla & 
Rogers, Margaret (eds.), Translation Today: 
Trends and Perspectives. Clevedon: 
Multilingual Matters Ltd, 55-67, 2003. 
[2]. Nguyễn Thị Như Ngọc, “Khảo sát thực trạng 
hoạt động đào tạo biên phiên dịch tiếng Anh 
tại một số trường đại học tại Việt Nam hiện 
nay”, Kỷ yếu hội thảo giảng dạy biên phiên 
dịch, Đại học KHXH&NV thành phố Hồ Chí 
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[3]. Nguyễn Quang Nhật, “Giảng dạy môn phiên 
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thảo giảng dạy biên phiên dịch, Đại học 
KHXH&NV thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, tr.94 – 
100, 2016. 
[4]. Gravestock, P. & Gregor-Greenleaf, E., 
“Student Course Evaluations: Research, 
Models and Trends”, Toronto: Higher 
Education Quality Council of Ontario, 2008. 
 [5]. Accreditation by testing – Information 
booklet, NAATI, 10-2015. Retrieved from 
https://www.naati.com.au/media/1451/accredi
tation_by_testing_information_booklet.pdf on 
March 10, 2019. 
[6]. Camellia, P., The interpreter’s role”,. 
Translation Journal, V6, No. 2, 95-110, 2014. 
[7]. McCaughey, K., “Skim, scan, and run.” 
English Teaching Forum v56 No.1, 45-52, 
2018. 
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