The Linguist

16 The Linguist thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES repeating what you hear, B>B, in order to work on accent or intonation). When reading a newspaper article, read it out loud; select key nouns and verbs, and look for alternatives. If the subject of the article interests you, prepare a short speech on the topic and deliver it out loud (to the mirror if necessary). Follow up by choosing an article in your A language and sight translating it into your B language. When listening to the news in your B language try giving a one-sentence summary of each news item. While reading literature, note down three interesting phrases and incorporate them into the next speech you prepare. Don't stop at revising a point of grammar – also invent five example sentences with the target structure. If you've picked up some useful turns of phrase from press articles or radio programmes, make a point of activating them rather than letting them stagnate as part of your passive vocabulary. For example, you could pick a topic for a conversation class with a native speaker and incorporate five new phrases into your chat, or do a few role plays on a relevant topic with a practice partner. You could even do some B>B consecutive or (harder!) simultaneous interpreting on a suitable topic, and reformulate the source material, incorporating your new phrases. For a break from formal learning, have fun and work both on the flexibility of your B language and on your delivery. Ideal candidates for this are games like Articulate, Taboo and Just a Minute. Spending time on improving your speaking skills alongside your retour interpreting skills pays off in more ways than one. It enriches your vocabulary, gives you ready-made solutions to draw on under pressure, teaches you to overcome linguistic and interpreting challenges, boosts your confidence, reduces the need for a native speaker to correct your mistakes, and helps you sound more natural. Whether you're working on improving a C language or turning it into a B language, I hope to have persuaded you that practising interpreting is not the be-all and end-all. Active exercises are the key to producing C or B languages that are evaluated not based on some unrealistic standard of perfection, but on whether or not they are fit for purpose. Once you've assessed the gaps in your knowledge and vocabulary, there are many ways to work on improving your abilities: 1 Think carefully about how much time you have to devote to your C language, and what your learning style is. Do you prefer reading or listening? Are you a visual learner? We all lead busy lives, and if you're combining language studying with a job and/or family life, it's best to look for activities that you enjoy and fit into little pockets of time in your day. 2 Be consistent. Language knowledge is one of those 'use it or lose it' activities, so aim for little and often. 3 Make use of new technologies and the internet. Back in the day, I would write a list of new vocabulary I had encountered in the papers, record the words on cassette (ha!), leave a blank, and then give the translation. Nowadays, you can use your mobile phone to do much the same thing, or explore apps such as Quizlet to create flashcards and audio recordings. There are tech solutions for everything from acquiring basic vocabulary and listening to native speakers in context (e.g. FluentU) to finding practice material (e.g. SCIC Speech Repository and TEDx talks) to checking your understanding after interpreting a speech (e.g. by switching on the captions on a YouTube video). These options can add fun and variety to your practice, and save time. 4 Listen actively. Don't just try to absorb by osmosis. Useful tasks to set yourself when listening to C-language materials include giving a brief oral summary of what you've heard; writing three questions about it and listening back to find the answers; and discussing what you've heard with someone else. 5 Change the balance as your knowledge becomes more advanced. You can't understand the structure of a language without some book learning about conjugations, declensions, phonology and so forth. A typical example of this is the differing use of verb tenses between languages, which can affect the meaning of a sentence. As your knowledge advances, however, it's important to shift the focus from grammar and word lists to understanding the language in context. Interpreting from a C language is very rarely an exercise in information retrieval akin to a listening comprehension. It's not about words; it's about understanding a speaker's intentions, ideas and tone. Often, this comes packaged in humour, cultural references and idioms. This is where you need to move beyond textbooks and into the real world; depending on your weaknesses and needs, you might like to watch TV, listen to political satire or read children's books, school textbooks or lifestyle magazines. 6 Last but not least, practise interpreting the type of material you will be exposed to at work. It's a good idea to record your performances. Leave a gap of a few weeks or months, try again and compare the two versions in order to assess your progress. Improving your C language © SHUTTERSTOCK

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