Peer Feedback Performance In Flipped Interpreting Classroom

Despite the importance of peer feedback in EFL writing and translation/interpreting teaching,little research has been conducted on its use in flipped classroom,a learner-empowering alternative to traditional interpreting teaching.This study aims to explore interpreting students’ peer feedback performance by examining the various types of peer feedback in a pair of flipped and traditional interpreting classrooms.A six-week experiment is conducted in one semester,involving 61 undergraduate BTI(Bachelor of Translation and Interpreting)students in total.Students in the flipped classroom are required to watch videos on specific interpreting skills to be trained in ensuing classes,take quizzes and learn supplementary course materials prior to class,while traditional classroom students receive lectures,take questions from the instructor in class and review aforementioned supplementary materials after class.Peer feedback data are collected via designed tasks on commenting the in-class performance of a particular student in the opposite class.Collected data are analyzed at affective,cognitive and metacognitive dimensions based on the revised version of coding scheme for peer feedback messages(Tsai & Liang,2007).Moreover,students’ cognitive processing of the course contents,i.e.,the interpreting skills either imparted through videos or lectured on-site,is also investigated via recordings of students’ in-class presentations and documentation of oral discourse in light of Henri’s(1992)analytical framework and models.Correlation analysis is performed in order to understand the relationship between the depth of students’ cognitive processing and their peer feedback performance in both classrooms.Quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate no significant difference in peer feedback performance in both interpreting classrooms,with a more frequent use of affective(supporting)and cognitive(direct correction)feedback than metacognitive feedback;however,the students in the traditional classroom exhibit more sophisticated reasoning skills(e.g.,in-depth clarification and strategies)involving deeper information processing than do those in the flipped classroom.Canonical correlation analysis suggests that the production of affective and cognitive feedback shows no correlation to the depth of cognitive processing;that of metacognitive feedback in the flipped group is affected by both surface and in-depth processing,while that in the traditional group only by in-depth processing.It is indicated that the flipped model exerts a negative impact on cognitive processing,thus affecting their ability to evaluate.Both classrooms perform homogenously in affective and cognitive feedback because the comments require few cognitive gains from classroom learning;and the identical performance in metacognitive feedback suggests a non-exclusive influence of cognitive processing.This study implies a critical use of flipped learning model and peer feedback tasks for interpreting beginners.