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Practice Activities – TETT

SUBJECT PRACTICE ACTIVITIES:


TEACHING ENGLISH THROUGH TRANSLATION
GENERAL INFORMATION:

The subject practice activities consist of doing individually four short exercises. The
document must fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: 3 pages (without including cover, activities’ statements, index or


appendices –if there are any-).
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Size: 11.
- Line height: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

Besides, the activities have to be done in this Word document: leave the activities’
statements where they are and just answer below them. In order to make the correction
process easier, please, do not write the answers in bold, and it will then be easier to
distinguish between them and the activities’ statements. On the other hand, the
document must still fulfil the rules of presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for
quoting and making bibliographical references as detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject


Evaluation” document. Sending it to the teacher’s e-mail is not permitted.

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the “Subject Evaluation” document.

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Practice Activities – TETT

Name and surname(s):


Group:
Date:

Practice Activities

Do the following exercises and justify your answers.

Task 1
After watching Philipp Kerr’s video on Translation in the English classroom -
available in the library and also at Kerr’s webpage here:
https://translationhandout.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/welcome/ (second video) –
can you propose counterarguments to his reasons for using L1 and translation
in the classroom (epistemological, scaffolding, intercultural, technical, etc.)?
Provide at least three counterarguments.

Task 2
In the video, Kerr asks the audience to do a first small translation task in a piece
of paper. Do you think such an activity could work with your students? Why?
Please explain the difficulties and strengths of the task thinking of your
students.

Task 3
Kerr mentions how students will be using tools like Google Translate and
supports the idea of training them in their use. In his webpage offers some
possible activities to learn English using machine translation (Google Translate
for example). Have a look at the proposals and design your own activity to teach
English using Google Translate (or similar) as a tool. Make sure to include all the
necessary requirements for a good activity: target group, aims, timing, materials,
etc.

Task 4
On the first days of class you were requested to fill in a survey on the vision of
translation for English teaching. What was the most common opinion of
prospective teachers? Can you see any correlation between answers? Would
you change your answers after doing the readings? If so, which ones and why?

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Practice Activities – TETT

The use of translation or the use of the first language in the classroom cause some
conflicts with linguists and teachers, there are some opinions against this methodology,
there are few literature that talk about translation in the classroom and some negative
aspects with this topic.
There are some arguments that we need to consider that why there have to keep out
the translation from our classroom, there are some of them that are intercultural and
technical, Translation process involves human cognitive and intercultural issues
involving the technical part or the use of some instruments to make translations.
Reading technique or closed reading bringing linguistic, semantic and cultural issues.
Google translation, that sometimes do not translate properly just literal.
One thing is that translation takes a lot time in the classroom.
Another aspect is students with different mother tongues.
There will be a specific curse to the students to manage the translation.
When students translate from English to mother tongue, they do not acquire the target
language; they pay attention only to mother tongue.
Translation only develop two skills reading and writing
The students are not motivated because they do not obtain the level of accuracy of the
target language.
Another activity showing in the video is that students have to translate a small sentence
in a piece of paper, I try the same activity with my students of 7 th grade in my high
school in Olanchito, Yoro but they could not, because they do not receive English
before in their schools. It was the first time they saw and activity in English they were
smiling and looking to each other and mention, teacher we do not understand we are
not gringos.

There are machine translation that can facilitate the work of our students but the
problem is that sometimes they do not match every single word with the correct
meaning. Meaning is more important that exact word when something is translating,
there are some obstacles that I will mention when we use this technology, that can help
but not in a 100%
Machines do not about abbreviation or grammar rules
The engine do not understand the behaviour- based rules
Machines hey don’t know how. Even those that have artificial intelligence.

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Practice Activities – TETT

I will prove some activities that I use with my students keeping in mind that sometimes I
need to check them for all the disadvantages that I mention before.
Also we can use Google translation for grammatical error, vocabulary, mother tongue
when the teacher speaks different mother tongue of his/ her students, bilingual
dictionary.
Target group: different languages.
Aim: translate sentences using Google translation and all its components.
Timing: 5 minutes
Material: computer, internet connection, or cell phone, tablet …etc

Instead of spending a lot of time explaining a topic for example the present perfect and
if our students have different language as the teacher, make them the sentences to do
the correspond translation in order that they can understand in their languages.

Another use of Google using an app is the wordlens aap, you put the camera in front of
the sing in different language and immediately you have the translation.

Just take a photo of whatever you’d like to translate, watch Google scan the image for
text and then highlight what you want to translate with your finger.

The microphone on Google, translate your pronunciation of basic sentences.


Also you can write it something in another language

I found another apps using Google to work with our students;


With BookWidgets, you can make interactive exercises for your students on tablets,
computers and smartphones. As a teacher you can choose between more than 40
different exercises and games.

EDpuzzle is an easy and effective way to deliver videos in your (Google) Classroom. It
comes with the questions about the videos.
Buncee: An interactive story, an engaging lesson, or a beautiful card.

Newsela builds reading comprehension through leveled articles, real-time assessments


and actionable insights.

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Practice Activities – TETT

As language learning the translation methodology has many positive things, it is


important to make some discussion, about the topic to make more accuracy and a
flexibly class, as teacher we can select material to work with it, illustrating some
particular aspects of languages and some structures and also culture, everything to
make students understand, it is interesting analyze the cross-cultural differences nd
critical thinking of our students considering that our students have different point of
view, so we need to take into consideration that there is not necessary the use of this
methodology during the year, we can take translation practices carefully and in some
moments of the course of the learning process, and especially with intermediate and
advanced students, translation help students in general; culture, intercultural
communicative competence, cognitive skills, for future job opportunities.
I think all the prospective teachers will mention that they will be agree with the use of
translation in the class, I think I consider all the aspect of this method and I have my
own perspective of the use of it and before using it I will take all the issues that I
exposed before into consideration.
There is no conclusive 'evidence' to demonstrate that translation in the classroom can
aid learners in their studies, or this method has more benefits than others, teacher is
the ones that will consider the potencial usefulness of translation in the class, and the
teacher is the ones that will provide more information about this controversial topic.

Reference
A. Duff, Translation (Oxford University Press, 1989).
A. E. Fantini, Assessment Tools of Intercultural Communicative Competence (Vermont,
2009).
D. Larcen-Freeman, Techniques and principles in language teaching (Oxford university
press,
2000)
N. J. Ross, Interference and Intervention: Using Translation in the EFL Classroom
Modern English
Teacher (Issue 9 (3), 2000), р. 61-66.
J. Stier, Internationalization, Intercultural Communication and Intercultural Competence
Journal
of Intercultural Communication, (Issue 11, 2006), P. 3-12.
R. L. Wiseman, Intercultural Communicative Competence (Newbury Park, 2006)

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Practice Activities – TETT

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