Class exercise for consecutive interpreting

How to create close to real life situations in the classroom for liaison interpreting? One idea I will test next year is to base a scenario on a selected Powerpoint document freely accessible over the net. There are innumerable number of these and selection might prove the hardest part. I shall provide the students with a copy of that presentation without additional information. Their task will be to get ready for the next course when I will do a presentation based on that ppt document, and they, one by one, will be in charge of consec interpreting for a few slides. At the end, for the last candidates, the other students will ask questions in Japanese to be translated to me in French by the interpreter being grilled. This could prove very interesting and a preparation to the devising of an advanced class for liaison interpreting.

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A quick search has retrieved very interesting examples of ppt files used for presentation. The course purpose would cover both the preparation and the actual interpretation. As the students are to be adults usually working with few time to allocate to preparation, part of the course would cover strategies to search for background data in a a state of urgency. Most students so far have not seemed to be much familiar with using Wikipedia and the likes.

Tasks of the students:

- study the ppt document, check for vocabulary and background information. Prepare 2 questions in French. Suggested time to allocate for the task : 1 hour
- be ready to interpret
- interpretation setting would replicate a standard business presentation with the presenter (me) self-introducing and giving a short message on his background.
- events - unexpected happenings during the presentation would be created to test and stress the need of flexibility for the interpreter
- post-mortem analyses should cover both preparation, interpretation skills and attitudes