Innovative Practices for Teaching Sign Language Interpreters

Metacognition and Recall Protocols in the Interpreting Classroom

RICO PETERSON Metacognition and Recall Protocols in the Interpreting Classroom PERCEPTIONS OF literacy have undergone a remarkable change in the last half of the twentieth century. Where before, literacy was thought ofas the ability to read and write, literacy today is construed as dynamic, as the ability to function in a language and culture. Agar (1994), finding it impossible to separate language from culture, coined the term lanlfUaculture to encompass the complexity ofthe issue . Building on the concept of literacy as the ability to function in a languaculture, biliteracy, then, the ability to function in two separate languacultures, can be seen as the sine qua non of a competent interpreter. As disparate fields of knowledge in philosophy, psychology, sociology , anthropology, and linguistics have branched out and recombined into the domain of discourse, our notions of language have evolved as well. Discourse has been defined in a number ofdifferent ways. Some call it language "above the sentence level" (Hymes, as described in Schiffrin 1994, 23). Others describe it as "stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified, and purposive" (Cook 1989, 156). Still others see it as "the interpretation of the communicative event in context" (Nunan 1993,6-7). Whatever perspective is taken, the study of discourse is an essential component in an interpreter training program. The study of language, foreign or native, has been in retreat for years in the United States. Study after study shows that students 132 METACOGNITION AND RECALL PROTOCOLS 133 place little emphasis on learning a foreign language (Bartley 1970; Reinert 1970; Cohen 1977; Christison and Krahnke 1986; Ramage 1990; Roberts 1992; Oxford and Shearin 1994; Mantle-Bromley 1995). The current push for monolingual education is another indication ofthe low priority foreign language study is given. The study of English does not fare much better. Recent research shows that eighth-graders in the United States read more, do more homework, and ask more questions in the classroom than do their twelfth-grade counterparts (National Center for Education Statistics 1994). Language , it seems, is largely taken for granted by administrators and students alike. Van Lier (1995) discusses the way the study of language has changed over the past several hundred years. From the time of the ancient Greeks until the late Middle Ages, the trivium ofgrammar, logic, and rhetoric formed the foundation upon which education was built. Since that time language has been slowly separated out from the core ofstudy until it has become just another of the many subjects in the curriculum. Van Lier cites this as a possible reason for the apathy students frequently show in language study. Yet language is likely as complex a system as humankind will ever devise. Learning a second language, then, especially in a classroom, is a prodigious task. The classroom is a notoriously inefficient place to learn language. An artificial environment, it is time-bound and often lacking in authentic language samples. Even when the teacher is a native speaker of the target language, the respective roles of teacher and student and the scripts of classroom behaviors and expectations often inhibit access to authentic, "natural" language samples. Language learning is generally not a concern in spoken language interpreting programs, in which bilingual fluency is a minimum requirement for entrance. However, as the field of sign language interpreting grows, so does the number of students for whom the classroom is the initial, if not primary, source of language acquisition . Here it is not unusual for students to enter interpreting programs with as few as three or four semesters oflanguage instruction 134 RICO PETERSON behind them, sometimes even fewer. Sad to say, some programs even offer interpreting classes to students who are still in the early stages of learning to sign (see Jacobs [1996] for a thorough, and alarming, discussion on just how unprepared many sign language interpreting students are to undertake the study of interpreting). In spite of this, it is not unusual for students to try to accelerate their program, to "get the certificate" as quickly as possible. In learning a language, as in interpreting, comprehension necessarily precedes production. Though few today would argue the post hoc nature of this relationship, the way we describe the process of acquisition is often at odds with our understanding ofhow it occurs. References abound to "learning to speak a language," whereas one rarely hears a comment such as "she can understand three languages ." The teaching texts we employ often reinforce...