Beyond error marking: written corrective feedback for a dialogic pedagogy in translator training

AbstractThis study will focus on the qualitative nature of corrective feedback on translations in university-level interlingual practica. Three broad kinds of feedback – direct, indirect and metalinguistic – are surveyed in light of the literature, with a view to establishing a dialogic pedagogy whereby the student and instructor, and students and peers, engage in multi-channelled 'talk' via prompts and responses through comments, oral conferencing, and iterations of a target text. While feedback may be directed at the level of task, self, self-regulation or selfhood, we will focus on written comments at the level of task and their role in feedback loops. As the learner's role in feedback interventions is often ignored, here I describe an active and interactive form of learner participation in defining a joint problem space. The potentialities of indirect and metalinguistic corrective feedback are explored, a typology of translation feedback methods is presented and exemplified and potential avenues for empirical research are outlined.Keywords: dialogic pedagogycorrective feedback (CF)metalinguistic CFfacilitative feedbackdirective feedback Notes1. See Thorndike (Citation1932): the Law of Readiness (learners need a purpose), the Law of Exercise (repetition and practice), the Law of Effect (emotional reaction to learning), Law of Intensity (vividness of an experience as more learning-conducive), the Law of Recency (recall is better with recently learned material), and the Law of Freedom (freely learned things are learned best).2. Cf. Nicol (Citation2010, 502–503).3. To 'tune' refers to Rumelhart and Norman's (Citation1978) schema-based conception of three modes of learning: accretion, tuning, and cognitive restructuring; theorists later added cognitive dissonance (a contradictory item in memory not assimilated in schematic memory but held unresolved, in tension, as anomalous). Neunzig and Tanqueiro, picking up on Butler and Winne's (Citation1995, 3) work, state: 'Simple feedback' may comprise an evaluation of the student's contribution (reinforcement-disapproval), informing him or her whether the answer is correct or incorrect, or alternatively it may entail an indication of what the right answer is in the hope that the student will remember it, i.e., what we may term 'corrective' or 'informative feedback'. 'Elaborate feedback' with instructive responses may take the form of prompts or guidelines which help the student to find the right answer (the 'answer until correct' approach), which we could term 'orientative feedback'. Alternatively it may comprise an indication of the most appropriate strategy to find an acceptable solution, which we could term 'explanatory feedback', or finally by presentation of a possible solution (in this case: a model translation) which the students can compare with their own work, and learn by imitation, autonomously regulating their own learning process.The above passage and the article's conceptual bases confuse some issues and invite critique. Corrective feedback as it is used in feedback theory (e.g. Ellis Citation2009) is not merely limited to direct feedback, i.e. simple error correction. The categories of 'explanatory feedback' and 'elaborate feedback' proposed in the above passage have established theorisations in the literature: notably, the various types of scaffolding (conceptual, metacognitive, procedural, and strategic; see Hannafin et al. Citation1999). The idea of the expert model translation is also presented too unproblematically as learning by imitation, which the authors themselves learned from class experience. Neunzig and Tanqueiro, moreover, conceptualise feedforward as including '[P-feedback]: Preventive feedback (prompts, comments, help or warnings) administered when students are about to run into a problem, to prevent them from making a mistake' (5). Preventing mistakes is indeed a goal for feedback, but so too is guiding students' problem-solving routines and metaroutines. It may be productive to consider feedforward, Hattie and Timperley's 'Where to next?' (Citation2007, 87), not only as prevention but also as responsiveness to and anticipation of perceived variables outside the learner's control or expertise. That is, feedforward aids the very design of task complexity: the provision of information cues appropriate to the task. The above caveats and nuances notwithstanding, the experiment described in Neunzig and Tanqueiro reveals advancements in real-time, immediate feedback from an instructor to a student at his or her workstation or working remotely.4. Facilitators can overcome reluctance to share by pre-marking student work with the prompt 'Discuss' at selected strategic points. Anecdotal evidence does suggest the potential, however, for this tactic to seem coercive to students.5. These student feedback initiations, as I will call them, might be articulated by the student as he or she delivers the work: e.g. 'Attached is Assignment 12 [in literary translation]. I'd be especially curious to know your impression of whether my handling of dialect becomes too caricatured, and maybe whether you know of searchable electronic corpora of this regionalect'. The initiations also might take the form of marginal notes or be summarised in a translator's log; for our purposes, it should be stressed that this protocol can identify rich points for feedback as well as difficulties and solutions found. In other words, they may be seen not as a textual history of the translation but as a contribution to a learning interaction, a collaborative dialectic. In the spirit of student goal setting, such initiations harmonise with translator empowerment.6. Audio commentary is an up-an-coming assessment format for providing formative feedback. According to 'Audio Commentary: Response and Relationship' (http://fpdc.kent.edu/resources/publications/activeinteractive/), instructors can embed audio in Word files, or attach commentary in .wav or mp3 format. MP3 files can also be burned onto discs, posted on Vista's Assignment, or even sent as Audio Inserts (in the Reviewing Toolbar of Microsoft Word). The freeware 'Audacity' is another option.7. Pym (Citation1992) identifies this category as a consequence of translation's natural indeterminacy, leading to the reader's response of 'Yes, but...' or 'No, but...' according to taste or another idiosyncratic criterion. A related concept in translation studies is Vehmas-Lehto's covert error (Citation1989, 2), theorised as a readability problem stemming from language use that is not incorrect but 'quasi-correct', and that impedes the reader's use or experience of the text.8. Elicitation is from Tedick and Gortari's (Citation1998) description of types of written feedback. Elicitations in translation feedback may or may not include potential solutions, but strictly do not include direct feedback (DF) that chooses a single term candidate for the student.9. Shute (Citation2007, 10) notes that elaborated, or elaborative, feedback explains 'why a specific response was correct, and it might allow the learner to review part of the instruction.' It might present information on the target skill or topic, provide hints, error analysis, and 'informative tutoring' – verification feedback and error flagging (Citation2007, 10). Brown and Glover's findings in their feedback classification system include skills as a category (Citation2006, 83).10. The author notes (1993, 124) that these categories are not exhaustive or mutually exclusive. The term convergent means resolvable in consensus; divergent refers to the multiplicity of interpretations and to disunity; inclusive and critical are orientations one assumes toward one's dialogue partner(s): the former is the attitude of openness, the latter one of skepticism (110–112).11. It should be noted that these are excerpts – neither the student follow-up (if any) nor the source texts are included, and thus we are not presenting translational data per se but focusing on the typology of feedback responses. Strategies used by both student translators and the instructor should be transparent to the reader. See also note 5, in which I discuss student feedback initiations.12. This assertion is potentially problematic without a clarification. Granting that many professional environments do not provide facilitative feedback for trainees, what I am asserting here is a pedagogical scenario in which feedback is provided as it would be provided in a performance management process or system. In other words, the authentic assessment construct here assumes the professional's role in order to provide authentic feedback, though it is acknowledged that one often does not always have this benefit on the job. Further, some of the pedagogical categories posited here would not necessarily be optimal industry efficiencies, but for pre-professional training they do perform an important function.13. We should be careful not to imply that indirect is 'better' than direct, and indeed we cannot assert primacy for either, only that both have a role we need to define further in translation pedagogy. Proponents of indirect feedback argue that it scaffolds guided learning and stimulates reflection on one's knowledge base and on partially internalized knowledge; supporters of direct feedback note that it reduces confusion about indirect forms of feedback, helps more with complex errors, and has the advantage of immediacy (Bitchener and Ferris Citation2012, 65). Bitchener and Ferris suspect that educational context and learner proficiency affect the relative utility of each form. Our study focuses more on indirect in that this form has a more obvious connection to dialogics and to learner self-efficacy, and can challenge outmoded classroom roles.14. Learner uptake is not used here in the sense in which it is used in speech act theory (namely, self-reported learning), but in the sense of what the student does in response to corrective feedback.15. Bichener and Ferris (2012, 155) recommend peer editing workshops for students to develop critical analysis and reading strategies that ultimately assist in self-editing.16. As Orlando (Citation2011, 298) asks, '[i]s the evaluation a final product evaluation, as for an entry test, a practical test, a practical test, a final exam, a professional accreditation test? Or is it a formative evaluation of the process of translation? Of the strategy of the translator? Of a group presentation of a translation?'.17. Examples of the latter include one devised by Dollerup (Citation1994), which includes a feedback form, a checklist of problems encountered in novice classes.