Chapter 15

Using the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method in healthcare interpreter education

This chapter focuses on the teaching of communication and interaction skills to learners who have already had the chance to acquire the basics of dialogue interpreting (DI) and to practice it through role-playing. It argues that traditional simulated scenarios should be complemented by alternative techniques using authentic data, and research findings about them, and suggests how this can be done with students at undergraduate and especially graduate level, as they learn to adapt their skills to particular interactional contingencies and to make judgments about particular situations. The technique developed by Stokoe (2011a) – the Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) – will be exemplified using authentic French-Italian interpreter-mediated healthcare data. However, CARM can readily be adapted to fit other languages and/or domains, provided that the teacher has a collection of audio-and/or video-recorded interpreter-mediated interactions available and a thorough understanding of conversation analysis.