A longitudinal quantitative investigation into the concurrent validity of self and peer assessment applied to English-Chinese bi-directional interpretation in an undergraduate interpreting course

One of the productive lines of research on self-assessment (SA) and peer assessment (PA) concerns their concurrent validity with respect to a criterion measure. However, similar research has rarely been conducted for spoken-language interpreting. This article therefore reports on a longitudinal study that investigated the validity of self and peer ratings on three performance dimensions of English-Chinese consecutive interpretation (i.e., information completeness, fluency of delivery, and target language quality), taking teachers' ratings as a yardstick. Major findings include: although the students as a group were unable to replicate teachers' ratings, they were able to rank-order their performances in a fairly accurate manner and improved their SA and PA accuracy over time. Interpreting directionality seems to moderate the correlational strength of self/teacher ratings and peer/teacher ratings. These results are discussed in relation to previous literature, and pedagogical suggestions are provided to improve SA and PA for bi-directional interpretation.