Self-confidence in simultaneous interpreting

Abstract

Even after many years of teaching interpreting, one still experiences unpredictable situations when trying to teach conference interpreting to our students. Both as a teacher and as a student, I have encountered a number of students who, unfortunately, were not successful in acquiring the adequate strategies for interpreting.It is this realisation that drove me to try new teaching methods. One of these has been tied to the selection of speeches that would prove (emotionally) engaging enough for students. I wasintent on trying to find out if empathy could help restore self-confidence in students, especially those with difficulties and help them improve their skills in interpreting (see also Furmanek 2006; Kurz 2003; Korpal 2016). In this paper, I will present findings of a survey conducted on my regular students