2.1 Group work as a tool for developing expertise, and its application to Interpreting
It has long been established that becoming an interpreter is a complex task, and one which requires years of training and practice which no amount of natural talent can make up for (Moser-Mercer, 2008; Setton & Dawrant, 2016). This, of course, is in no way unique to Interpreting, and many other fields also require great deals of training and practice to reach an expert level beyond mere talent;
one might think of doctors, professional sportspeople, teachers, or any number of other professions.
Given that so many fields operate in this way, some researchers in the past went so far as to say there is no such thing as talent, an opinion voiced particularly at the dawn of Deliberate Practice research lead by Ericsson and others (Ericsson, Krampe, Tesch-Römer, 1993). These authors insist that becoming an expert in any given task is purely a matter of time and effort, (Ericsson, Krampe, Tesch-Römer, 1993; Ericsson 2004) whilst adhering to the principles of Deliberate Practice. Current thought, however, is not quite so extreme; in 2014, Macnamara et al wrote an article demonstrating that despite the popularity of Ericsson et al’s thesis and its unquestionable contribution to the field, Deliberate Practice was but one of a series of factors which affected the development of expertise, and by no means the most important (Macnamara et al, 2014). Modern researchers are also more forgiving towards the role of talent, at least with regard to Interpreting; indeed, in their recent twin guide books on Conference Interpreting, Setton and Dawrant argue that “interpreters are both born and made” (2016, p.47), acknowledging that talent does have some part to play in the acquisition of expertise, however small. Although the “born” element is outside the control of both students and teachers, how interpreters are, or rather, should be “made” has been widely discussed, and the best way to apply methods such as Deliberate Practice in the field of Interpreter Training has been studied at length by researchers such as Moser-Mercer (2008), Aldea (2008), Motta (2011, 2013) and Setton and Dawrant (2016).
Distilled to its basic steps, Deliberate Practice is very simple: learners define an element of their performance they would like to improve, or identify an element of their skill they wish to master. They
set themselves an objective to overcome the problem or learn the skill, perform the activity with the objective in mind, and repeat until the problem is overcome or the skill learnt. This is to oversimplify, however, as both Deliberate Practice and other learning models such as Cognitive Apprenticeship (Collins et al., 1989, Dennen and Burner, 2008) and Scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1978) insist upon the presence of other individuals, either peers or experts, for the system to work.
These other individuals are required to provide feedback to the learner on how they progress and what they could change in order to do better. In the Cognitive Apprenticeship and Scaffolding models, experts serve not only as feedback providers but as models for learners to emulate. What is more, socio-constructivist researchers such as Järvelä (1995) view the phenomenon of learning as a social interaction, stating that “[students] should develop their conceptual understanding through social interaction and collaboration in the culture of the authentic domain activity” (1995, p. 240).
This idea has been reconsidered more recently by Coulson and Harvey, who say that “without guidance, structure, and support, learners may be overwhelmed” (2013, p.403) again indicating that learning requires social interaction to be successful. These four elements together, Deliberate Practice, Cognitive Apprenticeship, Scaffolding and learning as a social interaction, make a strong case for small, reciprocal (Järvelä, 1995) training groups, and as such it is no surprise that such groups are recommended by many Interpreter Training experts such as Aldea (2008), Motta (2013), and Setton and Dawrant (2016). The European Masters in Conference Interpreting (EMCI), a consortium of various universities offering such qualifications, also stipulates that “students shall devote time to group practice of Simultaneous and Consecutive Interpreting”, recommending that, in addition to the recommended 400 hours of class time, a further 400 hours be dedicated to group or individual practice (http://www.emcinterpreting.org/?q=node/13 , under point 4). In the specific case of Interpreting, group work and real-life, human-to-human communication also bring us closer to replicating the authentic domain activity sought by socio-constructivism, again underlining the benefit which group work can have for learners. Given the many hours that student interpreters spend in these groups and the benefit which it can have on their learning, it is equally unsurprising that the Interpreter Training researchers mentioned above all provide rough guidelines of how group
work should be carried out, and it is these guidelines which shall be used as a basis for the best practices put forward in this thesis.
2.2 The groups themselves: structure, composition and the need for preparation
The briefest of scans of literature on groups and group work in a very wide variety of fields reveals that just throwing students together and expecting miracles is naïve at best and unintelligent at worst;
as Webb (2010) states, “simply placing students in small groups does not guarantee that learning will take place” (2010, p. 636). As recognised by Hubscher-Davidson (2008), this sort of approach is extremely unproductive, and apart from yielding little in the way of results, is demotivating for the students involved. Although it is clear that the individual nature of the group activities will vary from subject to subject, thought must be given to how the groups are put together and how group activity should be structured (Jacques, 2003). In the Interpreter Training guides mentioned above, special attention is paid, particularly by Setton and Dawrant (2016), to the structure of the group session, i.e. setting of objectives before the start of a group session, performing an activity, and providing feedback on the activity. Only then, they say, can the students hope to make the most of the exercise.
This can be seen as building upon early notions of productivity put forward by Cohen, who argues that productivity can only be considered relative to the group’s goal(s) (1994, p.3); if the group achieves the goal(s) it set itself, then it has been productive. Webb completes the virtuous (or vicious) circle, stating that “in a group or cooperative goal structure, group members can attain their own personal goals only if the group is successful” (2010, p. 636). Both authors, however, agree on the need for preparation for group practice, not in the sense of preparing level-appropriate material (which Interpreter Trainers would also insist upon), but in the sense of “training for cooperation”
(Cohen, 1994, p. 30). In this way, learners would come to sessions prepared to work with and challenge one another with a view to progressing their learning.
Group composition is another intriguing topic, and although it is not something which students often get to control, it is important for their learning. It goes without saying that students should pay attention to how they put groups together, although, as indicated by Colbeck, Campbell and
Bjorklund (2000), good, if not better results can be obtained from groups not put together by the students. According to these researchers, students’ tendencies to pick the same friends to be their teammates in every group task “reduced their opportunities to work with individuals of different perspectives, backgrounds, or experiences” (2000, p.81), whereas selecting more diverse groups would have been more beneficial for their learning. The notion of diversity, however, is a complex one, and although Interpreter Trainers frequently focus on group composition in terms of diversity of language combinations, this is but one of many factors involved. For example, Curşeu and Pluut (2011) undertake a thorough statistical analysis of how group composition affects what they call
“cognitive complexity”, with the understanding that more cognitively complex groups learn better.
They conclude that a diversity of opinions and backgrounds amongst group members leads to higher cognitive complexity, and thus better learning, but can cause conflict amongst members. Webb (2010) also identifies this issue, stating that although groups progress best when having to resolve conflicts of opinions, an excess or lack of this conflict can cause problems. Cohen (1994), too, acknowledges that conflict resolution is an essential social skill for productive group practice.
2.3 Feedback and self-regulation
Although the researchers mentioned above focus on what we might call “positive conflict”, the Deliberate Practice approach insists upon what can sometimes become the double-edged sword of feedback; a seriously useful tool for learning, but a major stumbling block for many students. Boud and Molloy (2013) mark a major shift away from the traditional, top-down feedback model, encouraging what they describe as “feedback mark two”: a more dialogue-based, self-regulatory kind of feedback. They encourage what they term a “feedback loop”, where it should be demonstrated that a student benefits from the feedback they receive. Various different researchers have contributed to this new-generation feedback, including Nicol and MacFarlane-Dick (2006), with their recommendations for feedback-giving, Hattie and Timperly’s (2007) three questions, and Gielen et al.’s (2010) seven tenets of constructive feedback. However, an MA thesis investigation undertaken by Serrano Soler (2016) revealed that there is a disconnect between what Interpreting students in particular, at least in her institution, expect or want to hear in feedback they receive, and what they usually or like to include in feedback they give. Although Serrano Soler was discussing
one very particular set of students and a very specific time, the points she raises are indeed worth bearing in mind more generally. As McClean et al. (2014) point out, students expect and indeed require different kinds of feedback in different situations, and thus a disconnect such as the one revealed by Serrano Soler is not indicative of groups functioning at the highest possible level.
Serrano Soler discusses many possible causes of this disconnect, but a fundamental reason might be that picked up on by Hartley et al (2004), again looking specifically at Interpreting. She states that
“in addition to the arcane language used when discussing criteria, the lack of precision and clarity in the description of individual quality attributes is confusing for trainee interpreters” (2004, p.9); it is only logical that the accurate and useful feedback required in the Deliberate Practice model cannot be given if the ideal (expert) characteristics (in other words, the objectives), are not clear. Echoing earlier calls for training for cooperation, many of the authors mentioned above call for students to be trained in the giving of feedback as well, something which Interpreter Training researchers such as Motta (2011) and Setton and Dawrant (2016) try to do by means of rough guides to giving feedback included in their publications.
Despite the difficulties in providing feedback, its benefits are clear. Nicol et al. (2014) clearly show how students’ own opinions of both giving and receiving feedback, with particular emphasis on giving, indicate that providing feedback allows them to improve their own learning and think more critically about their own performance. This corresponds to McConlogue’s (2014) view that giving feedback is a more complex, and therefore more useful, activity than passively receiving it. Group practice which makes use of this sort of feedback and these sorts of interactions will eventually increase what De Bruijn-Smolders et al (2014) describe as students’ calibration competence, that is to say their ability to match their perceptions of their performance with the reality of their performance.
This will ultimately lead to an improvement in individual students’ abilities to regulate their own learning, because, as Boud and Molloy (2013) indicate, the very act of providing feedback to a peer requires a degree of self-regulation. It is, however, important that self-regulation is not seen as a final step on the learning ladder or a goal to be achieved; Fullana et al (2014), going further than Boud and Molloy, quite simply state that “without reflection on experience, there can be no learning”
(2014, p.2). That said, students can learn to be better at self-regulation, perhaps by adopting some of the self-regulation processes described by Dresel et al (2015), or perhaps through use of tools such as journals as recommended generally by Boud (2001) or, more specifically for trainee interpreters, by Harmer (2002).
2.4 Context
As mentioned in the introduction, this thesis involves a synthesis of ideas collected from a Literature Review and “viewed through the prism of a Conference Interpreting student’s perspective” (see 1.1). Before proceeding with a proper presentation of the module, then, the context of the work must be made clear.
The author of this paper is a final-year student on the MA in Conference Interpreting programme at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting (FTI) of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), a member university of the EMCI. Through this experience, the author was exposed not only to the notion of Group Work, but also to the Articulate Storyline 360 software.
In the same vein, it must be acknowledged that inspiration for structuring this paper was drawn from the work of López Sánchez (2017), who, in her MA thesis, also made use of an Articulate Storyline 360 module. As such, her paper served as an excellent guide for how to approach writing about such a module in an academic context.
It must also be stated that, as part of the Masters programme, the author has been engaged in compulsory group work sessions on a weekly basis, for which the entire year group was prepared via an introduction session with the Faculty Teaching Assistants. The Assistants provided the group with an overview to Deliberate Practice, as well as some guidelines to best practice in group work, in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation (Amos, Keller, Arbona, 2016). The presentation also focussed on practicalities specific to the system at the FTI (re. booking rooms etc.).
Recognising the fact that the author’s individual experience is limited to the UNIGE / FTI context, this paper and the accompanying module attempt to bear in mind that there are multiple realities in Interpreter Training, and the guidelines proposed are therefore based primarily on the wide-ranging literature detailed above, although contextualised by a particular institutional experience.