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Educational interpreters fulfill multiple roles, directly and indirectly,
when working with deaf children in a classroom. Arguably, one of
the most important indirect roles they fill is as a language model.
For many deaf students there is a dearth of fluent visual language,
such as American Sign Language (ASL), in their lives, often with
only the interpreter available to fill this role. With this in mind,
it is important for interpreters to be able to express the full
range of language, including all of its complexity. According to
Easterbrooks and Baker (2002), the later stages of English grammar
development include compound, complex, and compound-complex sentence
structures (p. 101). With this in mind, the researcher analyzed
her own interpreting work from a classroom setting for adjustments
made to the structural complexity of the languages used.
Methods
To begin, several days of an interpreted high school freshman English
class were recorded. Later, the videos were reviewed and notes made
of the beginning and ending times of different segments of the class
(i.e. warm-up/bell ringer, lesson, class work times) and the number
of subordinating conjunctions and potential complex sentences heard
in the source language (sL) were tallied. These tallies were an
estimate using what could be quickly identified while listening,
in order to choose a segment with sufficient examples to analyze,
and the times were used to identify a segment of at least five minutes
to analyze.
From this preliminary analysis, two segments were usable for the
study. The first was discarded due to its heavy discussion of English
grammar, and, therefore, was likely to have fewer ASL-like constructions.
The second was a mini-lesson on making an outline to organize a
research paper. This segment was transcribed using all lowercase
letters, except in the case of proper nouns. An attempt was made
to divide the text into utterances, defined as being the end of
a thought or phrase separated by silence or an interruption in turn
from surrounding phrases. The only conventional end punctuation
used was the question mark; all utterances were marked with a slash
(/) as end punctuation. Speakers were identified anonymously as
teacher (T), hearing student male (HSm), and hearing student female
(HSf). Time was marked in 30-second increments.
The spoken sL was then analyzed for subjects and predicates, coordinating
and subordinating conjunctions, compound and complex sentences,
and prepositional phrases. Sentences were made from the utterances
and analysis, and labeled as simple, compound, complex, compound-complex
or other label.
With the analysis of the sL complete, the signed target language
(tL) was transcribed and analyzed. During the transcription process
an attempt was made to capture all meaningful movements from the
hands, face, and body. ASL signs were written using a gloss system
of all capital letters with an attempt made at having the word be
the most typical English word associated with the sign. Movements,
gestures, facial expressions, body shifts, and the hand used to
sign were designated with lowercase letters, usually hyphenated.
Because the entire text came from the interpreter, no attempt was
made at marking speakers beyond what was signed in the text. This
transcript was then aligned with the sL text, matching the equivalent
spoken and signed utterances as closely as possible.
In analyzing the tL, utterances were evaluated for their meaning
and labeled simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, or other
label whether coordinating conjunctions or subordinating conjunctions
were evident or potentially implied. This analysis yielded many
simple sentences and relatively few more complex structures. Believing
this was not an appropriate division of the interpretation because
of the study's focus on sentence complexity, the video was reviewed
for sentential boundaries to be used in the analysis, as opposed
to the utterance boundaries. The analysis of sentence complexity
was then applied to this sentence-based text.
For those sentences that were evident in both the sL and the tL,
the labels of structural complexity were compared for similarity
or difference. Then a survey of the types of changes made was undertaken,
and potential reasons for these changes were sought.
Results
In all, 112 English sentences were interpreted into ASL and the
structure of both the original English and the ASL interpretation
were analyzed. In a majority of the sentences, the complexity of
the structure of the English was kept in the ASL interpretation.
In twelve cases, the structure was simplified when moving to ASL
and in fourteen cases, the structure was complicated when moving
to the interpretation.
Four samples were chosen where the tL was simplified and four where
the tL was made more complex in structure. In the cases of simplification,
repetition was removed and statements and questions were made more
direct. Emphasis was both reduced and increased at different points
in the sample. In the cases of complication, sentences were combined
or complicated most often with the use of the spatial descriptions
in ASL. Complication was also evident with the use of emphasis,
particularly with bracketing a phrase with the emphasized words
or phrases. Details can be found in the Interpreting Transcript
Analysis chart (attached.)
Conclusions
Some of the changes in complexity could be attributed to differences
in the language structure, particularly the spatial orientation
of ASL. Other changes, particularly the changes in emphasis, can
be due to the interpreter's knowledge of and feedback from her student.
Having worked together for a while, an interpreter would be familiar
with a student's understanding of certain topics and, combined with
feedback during the interpretation, the interpreter may change the
tL to emphasize difficult concepts for the student or gloss over
emphasized information the student already understands.
In the sample analyzed, there was nearly the same number of simplified
sentences as complicated sentences. Hopefully this trend would continue
in the entire interpretation, giving the student language which
is as complex as the original language from the teacher. This being
the case, the interpreter might be considered a good model of language
for a student who may have few ASL language models in his or her
life. Having a language model that is equivalent to the model the
hearing peers experience, the deaf student can be expected to develop
language at a pace similar to the hearing peers in class.
Discussion
Skilled interpreters are vital to the education of deaf children
in mainstream settings. As a language model, an interpreter has
direct influence over a deaf child's language competence. Since
deaf language development parallels hearing language development,
deaf children have the potential to be equal to their hearing peers
in terms of language competence, albeit in different languages.
Competence in the first language or natural language (L1) influences
a person's ability to develop a second language; the more competent
a deaf person is with ASL, the more competent they are able to become
in English. Development of L1 depends on exposure to a fluent language
model. As a teacher presents a lesson, the interpreter needs to
have the skill to maintain the complexity of the language of the
lesson, as well as the concepts of the lesson, in order to provide
not just the information, but a language model equivalent to that
which the hearing student experiences. This provides students access
to the content of the classroom and the opportunity to develop the
full range of language skills in their natural language which can
then transfer to English competency.
There are many possible faults in this study. First, the researcher
is the interpreter herself, which makes for a more subjective analysis,
using the interpreter's knowledge of the situation and what she
was thinking or trying to convey while interpreting. A second problem
with this study is the interpreter's inexperience with language
sampling. Dividing the input language into utterances was difficult
and nebulous. In the end, utterances weren't the unit necessary
for analyzing the structure of the sample and sentences had to be
reformed out of the utterance divisions. This in itself proved to
be difficult, especially in the ASL. As a hearing person, the interpreter
is used to hearing English sentences and finding the sentential
boundaries is nearly second nature; however, in the ASL interpretation,
determining sentential boundaries was considerably more difficult,
again, due to lack of experience in this procedure.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, inexperience in indentifying
sentence complexity has had an impact on this study. While working
through this process, the researcher has second, triple, and quadruple
guessed her decisions in labeling the complexity of the sentences
in the sample. While initially confident in the labels, the researcher
became less and less confident while working on the study so that
in the end she became so confused that she left her original labels
and continued her work with those original labels. Through the course
of the study, the researcher was continually learning more about
defining complexity which complicated the task and would have required
the interpreter to continually reevaluate the entire sample. A future
study should include multiple researchers or raters for the text
to allow for a measure of inter-rater reliability in developing
the transcripts and classifying sentence complexity.
With more practice and guidance this project would be beneficial
for the interpreter to ensure her skill as a language model as well
as an interpreter. This study should also be duplicated with multiple
interpreters, potentially as a screening for interpreter skill in
educational interpreting settings. Educational interpreters are
vital language models for deaf students and their skill should be
evaluated and verified, especially for the very young students,
but, in truth, no less for older students.
References
Easterbrooks, S. R., & Baker, S. (2002). Language learning in
children who are deaf and hard of hearing: multiple pathways. Boston,
MA: Allyn and Bacon.
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