Authenticity and Feedback in a Written Assignment
A student submits a 900-word Vietnamese analytical text on 'family expectations and generational change'. The teacher notices the register is far more formal than the student's classwork, two idioms appear that the student has never used orally, and a sentence matches a phrase from a website the class was given as a source. The student says she used an online translator for 'difficult sentences' and that her aunt, a former teacher, 'checked the grammar'. The task requires the student to analyse two Vietnamese short stories and one interview she conducted. The school's policy requires the work to be the student's own, with sources acknowledged.
1. Distinguish between the three issues here - authenticity, permitted support, and referencing - and say how each should be handled.
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Issue 1 - Authenticity (translator use). Using a machine translator to generate sentences the student could not produce means part of the text is not her own language. This is a breach if the policy requires own-language production. The teacher should identify which sentences were translated, ask the student to explain them orally in Vietnamese, and judge whether she understands and could have written them. If she cannot, those sections cannot count as evidence of her writing.
Issue 2 - Permitted support (the aunt). 'Checking grammar' ranges from proofreading punctuation to rewriting sentences. The teacher must establish what actually happened. If the aunt corrected errors, that may be permitted if the policy allows proofreading; if she rewrote clauses, it is not. The distinction is whether the ideas and phrasing remain the student's.
Issue 3 - Referencing (the matching phrase). A phrase matching a source requires acknowledgement. If it is a distinctive formulation, it needs quotation and citation. If it is a common collocation, it may not. The teacher should check the source before deciding.
Process. Interview the student, document findings, and apply the policy proportionately - a warning and resubmission of affected sections may be appropriate for a first, partially disclosed incident, rather than a blanket penalty.
2. The teacher wants to give feedback that improves the student's writing without doing the work for her. What should the feedback look like?
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Principle. Feedback should name the problem and the standard, not supply the solution. The student must produce the replacement language herself.
Techniques:
- Mark, don't fix. Underline the translated-sounding sentences and write 'register too formal for this narrator - what would she actually say?' rather than a rewritten version.
- Oral bridge. Ask her to say the idea aloud in Vietnamese, record it, and then write from her own speech. This uses her stronger oral control and keeps the language hers.
- Model at a distance. Show an annotated paragraph from a different text, so she sees the move (embedding a quote, then evaluating it) without copying content.
- Error patterns, not every error. Identify two recurring issues (for example, classifier errors and tense marking) and ask her to find and correct all instances herself.
- Referencing tutorial. Show how to integrate and cite the source phrase, then require her to do it for all borrowed material.
Follow-up. A short oral defence of her main claims confirms understanding and deters future translator use. Record the feedback given so the process is transparent if the grade is challenged.
3. The student argues that using a translator and her aunt's help is 'the same as using a dictionary', which is allowed. How should the teacher respond, and what should the final judgement rest on?
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Address the argument fairly. A dictionary is a reference tool: the student looks up a word and chooses how to use it. A translator produces whole sentences, so the student is selecting output rather than constructing language. The difference is degree of authorship, not the label 'tool'. Her aunt's help is closer to the dictionary case if it was genuinely proofreading, but rewriting crosses the line. So the comparison is partly right and partly wrong, and the teacher should say so rather than dismissing it.
Establish the facts. Which sentences came from the translator? What exactly did the aunt change? Compare against the student's classwork and her oral production. Ask her to explain the translated sentences and to rewrite two of them live.
Base the judgement on evidence of authorship. If she can explain and reproduce the ideas in her own Vietnamese, the underlying learning is intact and the response can be corrective - resubmit the affected sections with proper acknowledgement. If she cannot, the sections cannot stand as evidence of her writing, and the mark should reflect only the work she can defend.
Be consistent. Check whether other students used translators; applying the policy to one student only is indefensible. Record the reasoning so the decision is reviewable on appeal.