The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2020 - 28

HERITAGE SPEAKERS IN HEALTH CARE INTERPRETING continued

CLASS EVALUATION
Confidence in Abilities
As a result of this class, I have more confidence in my ability to...
Strongly
disagree

Disagree

Neutral

Agree

Strongly
agree

Shadow a speaker in Spanish

5%

-

5%

30%

60%

Paraphrase a speaker in Spanish

5%

-

10%

45%

40%

Interpret simultaneously

5%

20%

40%

35%

Identify, research, and learn new terminology in English and Spanish

-

30%

70%

-

To what extent did this class increase...
Not at all

Very little

Somewhat

To a great
extent

Your sense of community with your classmates

-

-

30%

70%

Your pride in your bilingualism

-

-

5%

95%

Your understanding of what is required in order to be a professional interpreter

-

-

5%

95%

5%

95%

Your appreciation for the profession
Your commitment to improving your Spanish language fluency

-

-

5%

95%

Your study habits

-

-

35%

65%

Your time management skills

-

5%

35%

60%

Figure 1: Student Feedback from Anonymous Online Survey
would apply to their own journey as
professional interpreters.
This and similar activities led to
indepth discussions, gave students
the opportunity to express themselves
in Spanish in writing (which many of
them were not accustomed to doing),
and build community by learning about
each other's experiences and reacting to
everyone's comments. As one participant
wrote: "The discussions did help a lot,
like to break the ice and get to know
each other, and then when we were
in class, it was like we already knew
each other."
Another key element of the classes
was using the material (the Audible
book, podcasts, and YouTube videos-
28

The ATA Chronicle | May/June 2020

all in Spanish) to harvest new medical
terminology and begin building students'
skills related to researching and evaluating
bilingual terminology resources.
One very heartwarming and slightly
unanticipated outcome of the online
course, which was expressed by many
students, was an increased sense of pride
in their bilingual abilities and cultural
heritage, and a newfound determination to
use these abilities to serve the members of
their community who rely on interpreters
to meet their health care needs.

in our 2020 program based on what we
learned from the 2019 class:

LESSONS LEARNED

Avoid technical glitches and slow
starts. Instead of simply diving in
online like we did in 2019, we added
an onboarding one-hour synchronous

This was also a rich learning lesson for
both of us as trainers. The following are
some of the changes we've implemented

Get an early handle on the tendency
to procrastinate. In our 2019 classes,
we realized that many students were
waiting until the wee hours of the night
before assignments were due to complete
their work, so we created a module and
assignments focused on procrastination
and time management into the curriculum
about halfway through the course. This
time, we simply moved these modules
and assignments to the first two weeks,
with good results!

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The ATA Chronicle - May/June 2020

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