Costruire autoefficacia: il dialogo formativo on-line nella didattica dell’interpretazione telefonica in ambito medico

Interpreting students are often hampered in their learning process by feelings of powerlessness, anxiety, and fear. We found that these feelings thrive when binding role models are the norm: models which restrict possible problem-solving and interpreting strategies, and promote a narrow idea of quality in interpreting which proves limiting for students. This scenario is all the more relevant in telephone interpreting, a peculiar communicative context where the interpreter cannot recur to the traditional strategies used in face-to-face interpreting. The literature on the topic supports the idea of the telephone interpreter as an active partner in conversation, thus conflicting with the restrictive role models adopted by the students. The thesis describes two blended courses in telephone medical interpreting (French-Italian) and focusses on a two-pronged goal: on the one hand, helping students face the typical challenges of remote interpreting; on the other hand, promoting students’ self-efficacy. We used a Socratic dialogic approach inspired to the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, using communication techniques drawn from Community Mediation and the Rogersian encounter to facilitate class debate and personal reflections, proposing activities such as the self-reflective journal and the pairing of simulations and authentic transcriptions. In our thesis, we explain the typical challenges posed by interpreting solutions, discuss the effectiveness of context-dependent strategies in this communicative context, and describe in detail the facilitating and empowering role of the teacher’s discourse in the on-line class through a Narrative Analysis of teacher-students exchanges.