A Proposed Rubric for Assessing Student Performance in Sight Translation

Abstract

Rubrics are scoring tools used to assess student performance based upon a specific set of criteria. They enable instructors to provide a more accurate, unbiased and consistent scoring, and they can, on the other hand, give students a clear sense of the expectations in a given assignment or task. It has been observed that the assessment of students’ abilities in the sight translation course offered in the English Language Translation and Interpreting departments of Turkish universities is not enough efficient and consistent. So, the goal of the present study is to establish a simple, reliable and effective rubric for assessing the undergraduate students’ nonverbal and verbal communicative skills when they read a written text in English and then translate it orally into their mother tongue (Turkish). While using the validity model of Lawshe (1975), the content validity of the proposed rubric in a triple period was tested by 5 experts in the first trial, 8 ones in the second trial and 10 ones in the third trial. The interrater reliability of the tool was also substantiated in the assessment of the recorded performance of eighteen students by three ratters. The results disclosed the highest content validity ratio for the nonverbal criterion of Eye Contact and the lowest for the verbal criterion of Enthusiasm.