The effect of fluency training on interpreter trainees’ speech fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness: an experimental study

Fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness are considered importantparameters of interpreting quality but have rarely been studiedsystematically in training programs of interpreting. Therefore, the presentstudy was set up to investigate the effect of fluency training on speechfluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness of interpreter trainees. Twogroups of interpreter trainees at a university in Iran took part in the study,receiving the same amount of instruction and practice (12 hours over 4weeks). The experimental group (N=30) spent 33% of the time (i.e., 4 of the12 hours in the training program) on dedicated fluency strategy training,encouraging the memorization, repetition, and retelling of audio and videomaterials. The remaining 67% was spent on training general speaking skills.The control group (N=30) were only taught general speaking skills in thetraining program but received no dedicated fluency training. Systematicinterviews were run to assess the interpreter trainees’ speech fluency,comprehensibility and accentedness, which were judged independently bythree expert raters at three moments of testing, i.e., pretest, immediateposttest, and delayed posttest (one month later). The findings revealed thatthe fluency training significantly enhanced the interpreter trainees’ fluency,and to a lesser extent the students’ comprehensibility but had only amarginal effect on accentedness. The pedagogical implication would be thatawareness training on speech fluency