Note taking strategies seem to be in a second place compared to general advice, but still half of the respondents think it is of importance in both questions, while the other half deem it “neither important nor unimportant”.
5.3.3. Adapting peer feedback to the receiver
All participants agree that they adapt their feedback depending on the person who they are sharing it with, although their answers differ slightly as to their reasoning.
One respondent considers that spending “extended periods of time” with the same group, meant that students “got to know each other's strong and weak points” and that in turn it eventually influences the way they give feedback. A defining trait of peer feedback in the setting of a ES group is that due to the regular schedule students are required to follow (Entraînement supervisé - Guide pratique) and the reduced number of individuals per group, students become extremely familiar with each other and with their individual interpreting patterns, so it is to be expected that students adapt their assessment to accommodate what they know about their peers.
0
Providing feedback 0 0 50 0 50
Receiving feedback 0 0 50 25 25
Note taking in survey
Providing feedback Receiving feedback
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Two other respondents seem to agree with this view, since it is implicit in their answers that knowing their classmates’ difficulties over time changed the feedback they give them: 25% say that they focus more on certain points if they knew that one of their peers was struggling with something specific and another explained that they may comment on minor issues in the interpretations that they would otherwise leave out if they did not notice that it was a recurring problem.
One respondent thinks that they adapt feedback to the receiver, but mostly due to their target language, since the better they understand the target, the easier it is to comment on the interpretation.
Finally, one of the respondents points out that on top of adapting their feedback, they make sure to emphasize strong points and to give advice when feedback is negative.
5.3.4. Peer feedback and learning process
Respondents say that providing feedback helps them consider new issues that do not come up in their own experience and to be aware that it could in the future, for example they say that giving feedback
“makes me think about what makes a speech difficult” and, as consequence, several point out that it broadens their understanding of the interpreting process and of what makes for quality in an interpretation.
They also point out that giving feedback is a good way to think about solutions to problems that may come up, to discuss with their classmates what to do in those cases and to later on apply the advice they give to others to their own work.
In question 8, respondents to the survey are asked about how receiving the feedback themselves influences their learning.
Firstly, they seem to value how receiving feedback provides them with a way to track their own progress in a more constant way. In line with other answers, some respondents mention that in some occasions the feedback they receive provides them with a different viewpoint than the one they would otherwise have, since sometimes their peers mention elements that they had not noticed while they were interpreting.
Motivation is also mentioned as an advantage to peer feedback and is noted as a source of encouragement for the students, especially in terms of confidence. Since interpreter training, due to its demanding nature, can be stressful (Setton, 2004), it is positive in terms of how peer feedback influences learning.
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Finally, some mention how peer feedback also offers them new solutions and ways to tackle any difficulties they may have encountered, and one respondent also appreciates how peer feedback related to consecutive helps them improve their note-taking system by helping them discover new noting symbols.
These answers seem to indicate that students believe that peer feedback helps improve their awareness regarding their learning process and their understanding of interpreting, as well as helping them remain motivated and boost their training.
5.3.5. Reaction to peer feedback
The survey also aims to understand how interpreting students react to the feedback they receive from their peers, both when it is negative and when it is positive. It should be noted that during the presentations, students are told to criticize the “performance and not the person”, and it is explained that in such feedback-heavy-training, it can be sometimes hard to distance oneself from the evaluations, so that is why it was relevant to comprehend how students respond to feedback from their peers, not only academically, but on a personal level too.
The majority of the participants seem to take feedback from peers in their stride: a few of them point out that they are usually aware that there is an issue with their performance and it does not come as a shock, since they agree with the feedback they were given.
Moreover, a few of them point out that feedback is given in good faith (e.g. “generally constructive”,
“very tactful”) and that it tends to be constructive. They seem to value the fact that when feedback is negative, it is meant to help them improve and they are open to listening to advice that they are given to improve their performance.
Furthermore, all respondents seem to view positive peer feedback as a form of motivation and validation (e.g. “motivational boost”, “builds me up a lot”, “happy”, “proud”), but a few of them point out that even when the feedback from their peers is positive, they rely also on their own self-assessment and if it does not line up to what their peers say (their self-self-assessment is not as positive), they tend to put more stock in what they think themselves (e.g. “proud!, unless my auto-evaluation is negative”, “I’m harder on myself, so I’m still not satisfied”).
It would be interesting to know if it is because they consider their peers to be less authoritative than their trainers or if it is something that also happens to some extent when they receive positive feedback from their trainers and it is due to the expectations they set for themselves.
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5.3.6. Peer feedback progression (questions 11 and 12)
The majority of the respondents in this case state their perception of peer feedback has changed over time, although the reasons differ slightly. One explained that they felt ill-at-ease when giving feedback to their peers at the start of the MA, especially when it was negative, but as they got to know each other, they got over that feeling. Another points out that as their understanding of what a good quality interpretation deepened, they learnt to focus on those elements and to leave out superfluous details. A third respondent claims that their peer feedback has become more structured thanks to
“instructions”, although they do not clarify what these instructions are. At the beginning of the course, students receive information about how to provide feedback and they are given a practical guide, so it could refer to further instructions, possibly from the assistants, or to information given to them in class by their teachers. Finally, one of the respondents considers that nothing had changed in any way they could identify regarding their approach to providing peer feedback.
On the other hand, all survey participants agreed that the way they react to the feedback they receive from their peers has not changed significantly since the beginning of their training.
5.3.7. Peer feedback in comparison to other kinds of feedback (questions 6 and 7) The respondents’ answers show that they are divided on how they perceive the difference between peer feedback and teacher feedback, especially in comparison to the difference between peer feedback and other kinds of feedback. Half of the participants consider teacher and peer feedback to be somewhat similar while the other half considers it to be somewhat different.
Two of the respondents clarify in a follow-up question why they think peer feedback differs from teacher feedback. According to one, it is due not only to their different perspectives but also the regularity of the feedback, saying that teacher feedback is more sporadic than the feedback from their peers. In contrast, another participant chalks the difference up to the more authoritative role teachers have compared to students and also to the fact that in their particular case, no one in the ES group can provide them with specific feedback regarding their target language.
Respondents agree unanimously that feedback from the teaching assistants when they attend the ES sessions is somewhat similar to that received from peers. Assistants represent a link between teachers and students in the sense that they were more recently interpreting students but have since graduated and gone on to become professionals themselves. This may explain why the feedback from the TAs sometimes resembles their peers’ feedback.
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In the case of self-assessment, the students answering the survey are divided on whether it is similar or different from peer feedback. Half of them consider it to be “somewhat similar”, echoing what had already been said in other questions: peers often agree with the feedback they receive from each other and therefore it confirms what they think. However, one person classifies it as “neutral” and another considers it to be somewhat different. Although these are three different positions, they are close enough in the grid that it can be concluded that none of them thinks that peer and self-feedback is considerably different.
5.3.8. Comments and observations
At the end of the survey, there is an additional box available to the respondents in case they have any comments, observations or suggestions that they could not make during the previous sections. In it, one of the respondents explains that peer feedback helps them cope with the workload and contributes to keep them motivated during their studies, a sentiment that is echoed in some of the previous answers in one way or another by most participants.
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6. COMPARED ANALYSIS
6.1. Overview
The corpus and the questionnaire are a combined data source based on two different methods that contribute valuable information and insight into peer feedback during interpreter training. The corpus provides an inside look into the peer feedback shared in the ES sessions of a given group during a defined period of time, while the questionnaire tries to delve into the perspective of feedback they received from their classmates and how it affected their learning process. In fact, questions 2 and 5 of the questionnaire were designed to overlap with the analysis model of the corpus to compare those two realities and analyse out how students are making use of peer feedback and whether it could be improved to enhance its positive impact in the acquisition and development of interpreting skills.
For the purpose of this analysis, the following equivalence is established:
Compared analysis Corpus Questionnaire
Unimportant Not mentioned
Of no importance Of little importance
Neutral Mentioned in passing Neither important nor unimportant
Important Mentioned in detail
Of some importance Of much importance
Table 5 - compared analysis grid
In the compared analysis, “unimportant” will refer to anything that ranked “not mentioned” in the corpus and to “of no importance” and “of little importance” when referring to data extracted from the questionnaire. When it applies, “neutral” will correspond to “mentioned in passing” in the corpus and
“neither important nor unimportant” in the questionnaire. Finally, “important” refers to the
“mentioned in detail” category in the corpus data and to “of some (…)” or “of much importance”
when referring to the questionnaire. This will be more conducive to pooling the data together and extracting conclusions based on both sources.
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Although some aspects of feedback align when it comes to the focus of the peer feedback and the student’s take on it, there is a certain disconnect between what students consider important and what they addressed in their feedback to their peers during the second semester at the time of the recordings.
This section tries to analyse and discuss the discrepancies and similarities found between the data from the corpus and from the questionnaire.
6.1. Aspects prior to interpreting
6.1.1. Personal objective in peer feedback