The effect of fluency strategy training on interpreter trainees’ speech fluency: Does content familiarity matter?

The present study examines the effect of fluency strategy training on the speech fluency of interpreter trainees using a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design. Moreover, it investigates whether content familiarity influences the students’ speech fluency or not. Two groups of 34 interpreter trainees at a University in Iran took part in the study, receiving the same amount of instruction (24 hours over 8 weeks, 90 minutes per session). The control group listened to/viewed authentic audio recordings and movies in English, discussed their contents, and completed a variety of speaking skills tasks but received no fluency training. The experimental group spent part of the time on fluency strategy training, encouraging the memorization, repetition, and retelling the audio and video materials discussed. Systematic interviews were run to assess the interpreter trainees’ speech fluency in two tasks. In one task the students were familiar with the contents they were asked to talk about; in the other one, they were not. The findings revealed that the fluency training significantly enhanced the interpreter trainees’ speech fluency. Furthermore, speech fluency was better when the students were familiar with the content compared with the condition in which they were not. Importantly, the positive effect of the dedicated fluency training program was larger when the students had to talk about familiar than about unfamiliar content. These results have pedagogical implications for practitioners in EFL settings, material designers, and interpreter training programs in training qualified future interpreters.