Job Discussion Forums

[Silent Shadow]

I believe that language acquisition is more efficiently acquired if students try to only speak in the taget language. In China it is quite obvious that the Chinese English teachers have used so much Chinese in class that it has impeded the progress of the students in their learning of English. After ten years of " English learning" my students still find it difficult to think in English.

The more a student uses their own language while learning a foreign language the more it interferes with their attempt at being fluent. True fluency is arrived at more quickly and efficiently when you focus only on the target language. I don't allow my students to speak Chinese at all in my classes, whatever the course is, never mind translation. That method is completely alien to my philosophy. They are like drunkards: They can't take one sip of Chinese without binging on it.

I think translation is a step backwards not forwards.

[Shan-Shan]

[Hansen]

Whatever the linguistic implications, the students are involved in these exercises as never before. Because many of the students usually just copy the work of the excellent students, there is virtually no thinking whatsoever on their part. Even if they are still thinking in Chinese, at least they are still thinking.

One exercise regarding Christmas included a Chinese phrase they literally translated as "the feeling of Christmas which surrounds you."

Here was an opportunity to introduce an idiom, "the Christmas spirit."

Even though I spent a few minutes explaining how the term
"Christmas spirit" fit into the dialogue, nearly every student still said "the feeling of Christmas which surrounds you" when they did their spiel. The concept of "Christmas spirit" was too abstract.

There are certainly limitations to translating; however, if the students understand "the feeling of Christmas which surrounds you" and don't understand "Christmas spirit" which is better?

[Buck Lin]

Having met translators at the top of their fields, I think it takes at least fifteen years of hard work to get the position. They learned the target language first and at the same time had excellent ability in their own language. Translators, interpretors nearly always translate into their mother tongue.
But for me today I still must look up words in my dictionary for the Chinese equivalant and often I get the wrong word. Like in the differences in brother in Chinese there are many but I got the wrong one the other day and called someone xiandi which means brother but is used by gangsters.

[Hansen]

Buck, Don't worry. I often refer to people as hei lao da. Listeners may think I am just a stupid foreigner misusing a term. I know what it means and intend the connotation implied in its use.

[eddy-cool]

Glad that others see the pitfalls of translation as a means to improve the English of Chinese students too!

I say if your subject is ORAL ENGLISH then it is SPEAKING and LISTENING but not TRANSLATING.

Translation work is best done in writing. And yes, while our students do practise that for maybe ten years hardly any among them become good translators.

What's the problem?

The problem is that a good translator does not translate words but thoughts. Thoughts can sometimes be hidden in punctuation marks (in writing) or in intonation (in speech).

A good translator conveys more than the semantic meaning of the sum total of words; he or she reads between the lines and renders the 'empty' spaces into meaningful messages.

Our students take far too long learning English vocdabulary without ever learning how to use it.They normally have a rigid English-to-Chinese schematic thinking. Say 'good evening' to a Chinese English speaker at 5 p.m., and he will correct you, "no, it's 'good afternoon.'"

There is so much to do in the oral/listening classroom but translating certainly isn't a good way of using that time!

[roadwalker]

I generally don't allow Chinese in the classroom either. On the other hand, I think Hansen's exercise could be of some value. It seems to me that Chinese to English translation is not the same as English to Chinese translation. Or rather, L1 to L2 does not equal L2 to L1. In Hansen's class, the students already have a good idea of what the meaning of the Chinese is, but now they are strictly thinking about what the appropriate English is to express the idea. They are not reflexively translating to Chinese because its already known.

Additionally, as he pointed out, it gives an opportunity to teach appropriate language to ideas the whole class is likely clear on. When I use Chinese oral English textbooks, I often find myself 'unteaching' crappy dialogue that no westerner would use. The students are interested in knowing the 'real' dialogue, but I'm afraid the unrealistic original dialogue will be what, if anything, really sticks.

[sheeba]

Hi Peter,

Your question regarding kids. Kids learn differently. I think the L1 can be used to aid acquisition. We can talk about more abstract concepts in Chinese after 5 years of learning because we've translated the phrases that make the abstract concepts that English can explain with less forms to learn. When we talk about the objective stuff that Chinese seems to categorise into more words(basically)like 建 and its collocations for build,establish,make,construct and so on and the particles(ge,de.le) that don't explicitly indicate grammar functions then we really can make use of translating those bits to help us.
Granted some words would be better taught in English, not translated and translating to learn Chinese may be more beneficial than vice-versa. I was thinking about learning Chinese. I still think that you can selectively choose words to translate into English- the ones that are more transparent in your language.
I'd agree that many words that don't have equivalents in English especially abstract ones could be better taught without translation. Inbred ideas like 'the knack' for something are sometimes just easier by explaining 2 different concepts to the word.

TPR IMHO is good for kindy class (3 year olds especially)but limited when teaching adults.

Longshi - I try and adapt the CLL method using it to my advantage. I tend not to translate myself but let the students help one another. I'd rather not (like others say) show off my Chinese in class for reasons(embarrassment included!). So a student will read say a paragraph in Chinese and then we reflect on it after a translation. I step in and help with areas where we could consider other words/idioms/sentence structures/topic fronting or whatever. All depends on my lesson aim.You need to predict problems from the translation so you do need to be skilled in the L1(need to read the text yourself and translate) and also at dealing with a variety of English issues all at once.I think this can cause problems. So having concise aims for your lessons helps.

[Buck Lin]

Sheeba I think the term is Interlanguage. It is a stage where the learner uses their tongue along with English when speaking. Sometimes when a teacher uses Chinese along with English, communication is facilitated. It is a stage everyone must go through.
The real problem is that students in China like to be comfortable and if they leave the comfort zone of having everything explained to them they are angry. Learning a language is not comfortable as anyone in this country who is trying to learn Chinese will attest to. You get laughed at, people shoo you away and basically make you feel unwanted.

[Hansen]

Perhaps the term "translating" has some unwanted connotation. What I actually want the student to do is to express in English the same sentiment contained in the Chinese dialogue or phrase on the board.

The goal of oral English is to enable the student to express their own ideas in correct English, right?

Basically, the Chinese text on the board gives them an idea to express in English. They are "taught" various ways the "idea" in the Chinese text can be conveyed in English. Sometimes they do a literal translation and then we arrange it into syntactically correct English expression.

Regardless of the effectiveness of the method from a pedagogical point of view, considering the limitations of my own ability as a teacher, this method is a gold mine. I now have a class that is more involved and interested in the learning task. That's progress.

[sheeba]

[sheeba]

So after a bit of reflection and inspired by the master Halliday I've come to some rough and somewhat inchoate ideas.

Interlanguage, yes a humongous affect on students here. You hear it in their segmental pronunciation attempts , prosody, vocabulary and structure. Discourse over longer stretches I'm sure also has a big affect.

So is translation good thing?

One thing that Halliday goes on about and I think has an influence is particles.He talksof the particle (le) and its usage as an aspect indicator. Now there are some structures in Chinese (for example intransitive verbs or adjective predicates) that may indicate perfect and past tense.

With this in mind it seems sensible to think about how a student would(if interlanguage issues exist) be affected by the particle If you teach the students grammatical features that are similar to the way lets say a kid learns English this IMO could damage the students progress severly. How often do we hear 'yesterday I go swimming' and errors with the simple past. Has anybody actually wondered why these occur?

I'd say that presenting forms such as the present perfect early on in a course to students say pre-int(something that many pre-sevice courses recommend) could damage a beginner student in that the particle transfer is an issue so much that they generalise the positive transfer of the particle and then start trying to likewise use their analogies and negatively transfer and try and attemp intransitive verb forms without tenses- just like Mandarin does. Carry on'What did you do yesterday ? I go swimming' Chomsky was not so wrong in some areas.

I'm for teaching new forms and forgetting students L1 in the process but the Community Language Method I think could work against these transfer issues in that the student could be nursed in the areas that he/she is unfamiliar and those areas are the areas that translation should hasten to address. The student analyses the language to the point that the grammatical structure is broken down and compared. Subtle language features can be noticed.


Richards(1986) notes that ' CLL does not use a conventional language syllabus, which sets out in advance the grammar, vocabulary, and other language items to be taught'

It's up to us to devise the syllabus.

[Hansen]

Something else I've started doing, in a different class, is using flash cards when things start getting noisy. I know they have studied enough. This can easily be done with vocabulary. One card has a word, one a definition. I then pass out the cards and the students must find their match. They love it. I give them points which makes them happy. It gets them out of their seats.

They learn the rudiments of research since the words are related to a reading item which introduces the new term. They review the material to find the definition or they use a dictionary, which is fine.

Really, all I know about Chomsky is that Woody Allen had a bit about intellectual prostitutes who would discuss him with you for a fee.

[sheeba]

They learn the rudiments of research-they discover and learn how to co-operate to learn.It's all good.

Chomsky had his points but overdramatical if you ask me. You can't deny certain aspects of behaviourism. That's real life stuff.

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[LongShiKong]