The Comparative Efficacy of Immediate and Delayed Graduated Corrective Feedback on Iranian Students’ Translation Competence: An Application of Angelelli’s Rubric

Abstract

Developing and assessing translation competence (TC) has long been a contentious issue in the field of translation studies. Likewise, the optimal methods for providing feedback to improve this competency, as well as assessing it, have remained unclear. This study investigated the comparative effects of immediate and delayed graduated (from implicit to explicit) corrective feedback (CF) on the TC of Iranian university students. Sixty junior students of English translation were selected through convenience sampling and divided into two 30-member experimental groups (immediate and delayed). They were given a text extracted from Grisham's novel, Gray Mountain, to translate as the pretest that was scored by two experienced raters based on Angelelli's rubric, whose reliability was estimated as 0.91 through  Cronbach’s alpha in the pre-testing process. Both groups received six treatment sessions and were given five texts from the same novel to translate. The immediate group received feedback within the translation task, while the delayed group received it one week after translating each text. The feedback type for each group was provided based on an adopted (from Aljaafreh & Lantolf’s study) and adapted four-item graduated feedback scale. The same text used as the pre-test was given to them as the posttest to be translated. Pre- and post-tests were scored holistically, using Angelelli’s rubric by the two raters, whose agreement in scoring was proved through Pearson Product-Moment Coefficient of Correlation (.97 for pre-test and .98 for post-test). Two paired Samples T-test and one independent sample T-test were run to analyze the data. The results revealed that both feedback types significantly improved the students’TC (immediate: t (29) =15.07, p=.000; delayed: t ₍₂₉₎ =10.22; p =.000), but there was no significant difference between their effectiveness (t ₍₅₈₎ = 1.899, p = .063, p> .05). These findings suggest that both feedback types can be viable strategies for enhancing TC. In addition, applying Angellelis’ holistic rubric for more objective scoring in translation assessment is tested and recommended by the researchers of the study.