A Study on Peer Mediation in Dynamic Assessment of Translation Revision Competence

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how peer-mediated Dynamic Assessment (DA) unfolded in translation revision competence (TRC) of students of Master’s degree of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in China. Thirty subjects first completed three revision tasks and were then rated as high- or low-level performers according to their average scores across the first two tasks. Students were subsequently assigned to either the role of learner or peer mediator. Peer mediators received training in a graduated prompts approach to DA to learn how to provide their peers with mediation. Peer mediation sessions were conducted with the mediators and the learners paired at random and directed to jointly review their third revision. After that, all participants re-revised their last texts with their justifications and were interviewed about their attitudes towards peer interaction and their progress in TRC. Diagnosis of TRC comprised scores of the first two revisions as well as the third revision following peer mediation, with this latter score indicating responsiveness to mediation and interpreted as the Zone of Proximal Development. The findings indicated that peer mediation may help improve both mediators’ and learners’ TRC, yet other potential factors at work should not be ignored. The peer engagement process allowed participants to improve their TRC in terms of justification and interpersonal skills. This research explored the application of DA in translation training and provided a process-oriented evaluation for translation studies.

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the assistance and support of Professor James Lantolf, Professor Matthew Poehner, Professor Yaru Meng, Dr. Yanhua Zhang, Dr. Jiao Xi, Dr. Ruimin Ma. The authors also acknowledge Dr. Gary Ockey, editors and anonymous reviewers of LAQ who provided helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ See https://cnti.gdufs.edu.cn/system/_content/download.jsp?urltype=news.DownloadAttachUrl&owner=1144326591&wbfileid=1182146 for more details in the training curriculum of MTI.

² The 3 Chinese texts were excerpts from these websites: (a) http://www.xian-tourism.com/channel-details.html?channelCode=index&code=gsyzgeql, (b) http://static.nfapp.southcn.com/content/201802/24/c984574.html?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0, and (c) http://www.sxycrb.com/m/content_200397.html?from=timeline.

³ See http://210.240.188.161/Chinese_CohMetrix/index.php for the introduction of the module of Chinese Text Analysis in Coh-Metrix.

⁴ See http://www.gunning-fog-index.com/ for the introduction of the Gunning Fog Index.

⁵ Influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, it was hard to gather all participants in one place. Thus, the experiment had to be completed in four batches according to the locations of the participants. The grouping was limited to the sub-groups.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 20AZD129).