Masters Degrees (General Linguistics)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (General Linguistics) by Author "Booysen, Lene"

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    Educational interpreting in undergraduate courses at a tertiary institution : perceptions of students, lecturers and interpreters
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-04) Booysen, Lene; Conradie, Simone; Oosthuizen, Johan; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of educational interpreting at tertiary institutions in South Africa. Various pilot studies, as well as long-running interpreting projects at North West University, University of the Free State, and the University of Johannesburg have shown that educational interpreting is a viable way of implementing a multilingual language policy and accommodating various languages in the classroom. Educational interpreting has also been researched at Stellenbosch University (SU) in recent years and following the success of a 2011 pilot project at the Faculty of Engineering, the university plans to implement the service in other faculties as well (see Stellenbosch University Language Policy 2014). The study reported in this thesis was conducted at SU and was interested in the perceptions of interpreting held by the three main role players in the interpreting service. The main focus of the study was on examining perceptions of interpreting held by second year Engineering students who attended lectures in which educational interpreting was used as mode of delivery. The data collected on these perceptions was also contextualised by findings from data collected on students’ language backgrounds (including language use, language attitude and actual and perceived language proficiency). As a secondary aim, the study was interested in the perceptions held by lecturers and interpreters working in the Faculty of Engineering. Findings indicated that students generally had positive perceptions of interpreting and felt that interpreting was a good way to accommodate various languages at SU. It also proved useful to collect data on students’ language backgrounds in order to contextualise the results of the interpreting questionnaire, as important nuances emerged which were not apparent when these results were considered on their own. This lead to the insight that feedback from students regarding their experience of the interpreting service should be contextualised in terms of their language backgrounds, as this would lead to more valuable and useful feedback. Finally, lecturers and interpreters both showed positive perceptions of interpreting, with a marked progression in perception of the role of the interpreter in the classroom becoming apparent as experience of educational interpreting increased. The most important suggestion to follow from this finding was that students and lecturers should be made (more) aware of what interpreting entails, how interpreters are trained and how they prepare for lectures, as this should lead to more positive perceptions and increased use of this service.