Feedback in deliberate practice

Feedback plays a key role in deliberate practice. Ericsson (1993) says that “in the absence of adequate feedback, efficient learning is impossible and improvement only minimal even for highly motivated individuals” (p. 367), but why is that and how does it apply to interpreting?

Receiving feedback gives trainees the opportunity to understand their errors and their strengths, while also providing them with suggestions that could be useful to circumvent whatever complications they encounter. It is logical to deduce that if this self-awareness were lacking, students would be doomed to repeat the same mistakes and, as per Ericsson (1993), progress would then be minimal. Therefore, feedback is one of the tools students can rely on to ensure that they are not engaging in senseless practice and keep them on the right track.

In the University of Geneva’s FTI, students receive feedback from three main sources: their teachers, their peers and themselves, that is, self-assessment. This section will try to discern the differences between peer feedback and teacher feedback, and between peer feedback and self-assessment.

3.5.1. Trainer feedback and peer feedback

Trainer or teacher feedback in conference interpreter training can be defined as “the immediate or retrospective corrections, assessment and advice and the objective description of a performance given to the student, by the teacher, about his or her performance with the aim of improving it in the future”

(Arumi et al., 2006, p. 20), while “peer feedback” is defined, as a “retrospective evaluation of one or more student/s provided to the other students about their performance in class, which ultimately contributes to the student’s metacognitive analysis to ensure improvement” (ibid, p. 22-23).

Since it is an evaluation, ideally peer feedback should also contain “correction, assessment or advice”

and “a description of the performance” (ibid, p. 17). The difference between the two lies in the position of the trainers as experienced professionals and for some of them in their preparation as instructors.⁵ Teachers’ insight is especially valuable because as experienced professionals who have previously been interpreting students, they may have had to overcome some of the problems the student faces, through strategies and techniques that they have probably been employing for years. The insights of the teacher can help the students to identify goals, to recognize strengths and

5 The FTI offers a Master of Advanced Studies in Interpreter Training that aims to provide professional interpreters with the theoretical and pedagogical background to teach interpreting at university level (University of Geneva, 2017).

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weaknesses so they can set new objectives and understand what it is expected of them, especially relating to the curriculum (Arumi et al., 2006).

3.5.2. Complementarity of trainer and peer feedback

Teacher and peer feedback are complementary for several reasons. Firstly, students can use teacher feedback to learn how to evaluate their own performance and that of their peers and, therefore, model their feedback on the assessments received from teachers and assistants. As it will be shown in the corpus, students often refer to their teachers’ advice and insights in their peer assessments and self-assessments. This can be very enriching in classes where students with different language combinations come together, because it allows them to share what they have learned in their own classes and it gives access to new perspectives, advice and insights indirectly from other instructors.

Peer feedback also complements teacher feedback in that it is easier for fellow students to relate to each other, since they are all following the same academic program. From my perception as a student, while trainer feedback tends to always identify the problem and the errors of the interpretation, it is not always as accurate regarding the underlying causes or, at least, they are not always put in a way that the student can relate to. Fellow students, probably aided by how well they get to know each other personally due to the long hours spent together, both in class and outside class, and aided by their similar experiences, have a good grasp of the personal circumstances that result in a particular mistake or bad habit, even though they may not be familiar with the underlying processes behind interpreting. This trust and their position as students on equal footing also makes them perhaps more willing to admit their shortcomings (unfamiliarity with concepts or lexicon, lack of preparation, etc.) without fear for their grades, compared to when they receive the similar feedback from their teachers.

Be that as it may, even if they have a better grasp on the causes and are more willing to open up about their failings with their peers, they are not always able to give an effective solution, hence why teacher and peer feedback are complementary. In the table below, the different types of feedback given in each training environment are shown. Outside of general classes, teacher feedback for a given performance comes from one single person. During ES sessions, students receive peer feedback given by different people from different backgrounds, areas of expertise and language combinations.

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Teacher feedback Teaching Assistant feedback Peer feedback

Master classes Yes No No

Language pair classes Yes No No

ES No Yes (once a month) Yes

Evita No Yes (once a month) Yes

Table 1- Type of feedback given at each training environment

For instance, the ES group in this project is made up of five people, who come from four different countries and who have four different mother tongues and complementary language combinations. In the best case scenario for a given speech and performance, peer feedback allows the student to receive an assessment from very different points of view depending on the language combination at play:

firstly, the original speaker, who is able to judge the content and the understanding of the intended message in the source language; secondly, “pure clients” who did not understand the content of the original and can focus on the speech in the target language without comparing it to the original to give feedback on the presentation and style; thirdly, in the case of people sharing a mother tongue, assess the quality, style and nuances of the language that may escape non-native speakers, and lastly people who listened to and understood both speeches and can compare the original to the interpretation. In that sense, peer feedback is a truly enriching experience that is very different to the context of language pair classes

3.5.3. Peer feedback and self-assessment

Peer feedback serves to encourage student involvement in the learning process (Arumi et al., 2006:

p.22-23). When students are tasked with commenting on their classmates’ performance, they are forced to reflect on what makes a good interpretation and how the performance could be improved.

This kind of self-reflection is very useful because it allows the student reflect on their own progress.

It contributes to a growing awareness of the cognitive processes behind interpretation amongst trainees. In addition, it encourages trainees to extrapolate what they learn from their classmates to

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their own interpretations and, later, they can use the insights gained to enrich their own self-assessment.

3.5.4. Drawbacks of peer feedback

One difference between trainer and peer assessment is that, as instructors, teachers have been trained to develop pedagogical methods to help the student learn. On the other hand, some peers do not know how to generate useful comments on others’ performances and they tend to start out with no experience on how to give feedback on an interpretation (Arumi et al., 2006, p.22-23). This drawback is more evident at the start of the programme, since a by-product of receiving and giving feedback is learning how to give more targeted, useful feedback. Arumi, Dogan and Mora (2006) suggest that a way to circumvent this problem is to guide the student on the assessment criteria and on the level of competence they comment on. Another option is to provide the students with peer assessment sheets to ensure the relevance of the feedback provided by the students and to help develop the students’

“judgment skills” (Adams, 2008).

Nevertheless, it is true that there is a possible disadvantage of peer assessment that has not yet been mentioned. Although the close relationship between peers make them perhaps better able to relate to the struggles of their classmate, this can make their assessment more subjective (Arumi et al., 2006, p. 22-23) since they may be overly lenient so as not to hurt each other’s feeling or so they do not draw criticism upon themselves. When there is a close relationship between the trainees, they may let their personal bias soften or change the feedback they are providing.

On the contrary, if some of them do not get along, they may not always put aside personal rivalries and give the other a fair, unbiased assessment. Naturally, it is also possible for instructors be subjective too but their role as a teacher helps them keep more distance and be more objective than students.

3.5.5. Conclusion

Peer feedback allows students to practice interpreting with their peers in a space where they feel more comfortable making mistakes and learning from them, complementing the feedback and assessment they receive from their teachers and allowing them to put it into practice, learn from their peers and support each other through their learning process. Through a corpus of peer feedback and the survey, I will try to analyse how peer feedback is conducted in an interpreting practice group.

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4. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS