There were altogether 33 evaluative retrospective comments collected from students in the course of the longitudinal study. The comments fall into five broad categories: source language text, problem triggers, target text production, general comments, and comments about the sessions (Table 13.1).

 

 

Results indicate that students mentioned problems or benefits related to language production of the target language text most often, followed by problem triggers and source text perception.

 

 

The data show that there were both positive and negative comments about the SL text, while comments related to problem triggers were mostly negative. Retrospective comments related to target text production were mostly positive.

 

Results indicate that, as students progress in their training, there are fewer comments related to SL perception and problem triggers, and more comments related to target language text production. In other words, there is a shift of focus from SL comprehension towards TT production, with an additional shift within TT production from content and lexical access problems to intonation and the use of coping strategies.