Evaluating written versus audio feedback in formative assessment of consecutive interpreting

Abstract In formative assessment, teacher feedback can enhance student learning. To reap such benefits, educators need to deliver feedback in such a way that arouses students’ learning interest, invites their active engagement, and inspires follow-up action. We report on an exploratory qualitative study that compares two modalities of teacher feedback, namely, written versus audio feedback, provided to a group of 41 students in a consecutive interpreting course. Our qualitative content analysis of the students’ responses to the questionnaire reveals 25 lower-order themes, categorized into seven higher-order themes concerning inherent properties (informational, structural, and prosodic) and consequential aspects (communicative, functional, affective, and metacognitive) of written/audio feedback. Overall, the results seem to show the students’ preference for the audio feedback, because of its informativeness, specificity, interactivity, and affective/cognitive benefits. We discuss these results in terms of students’ learning gains, learning style, task-feedback alignment, and relationship between feedback specificity and modality for interpreter training.