Interpreting for Tourism: Enhancing Communicative Competence through Peer and Self Evaluation
Keywords:
Communicative Competence, Consecutive Interpretation, English for Specific PurposesAbstract
This study examines how short consecutive interpretation tasks in a tourism context enhance EFL (English as foreign language) university students’ spoken communicative competence from a cognitive language learning perspective. Grounded in the noticing and output hypotheses, it investigates whether real-time interpreting promotes learners’ awareness of linguistic and discourse-level deficiencies through active verbalization, peer assessment, and self-reflection. English-major students interpreted authentic travel guide content from Chinese into English and received structured peer feedback. Performances were evaluated using CEFR-based descriptors, and peer and instructor ratings were compared using t-tests. Qualitative analyses of peer comments and reflective writing from the interpreting students further explored perceived communicative weaknesses.
Results showed close alignment between peer and instructor ratings in range, accuracy, fluency, and interaction. However, peers consistently rated discourse coherence more favorably than instructors, suggesting limited sensitivity to global discourse organization under high cognitive load. Reflective writing enabled students to identify lexical, grammatical, and strategic gaps and consider alternative communicative approaches. The findings indicate that short consecutive interpretation functions as an effective output-driven task that fosters noticing and communicative development. The study recommends embedding profession-specific interpreting tasks, structured peer assessment, and guided reflective practice into English for Specific Purposes (ESP)-oriented EFL curricula, with explicit instruction in discourse coherence.
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