Imagine this: You are teaching English to a group of Spanish speakers, but you don't speak Spanish. The group is having difficulty understanding the present perfect tense. What can you do? Well, traditionally most of us have done our best to explain things in simple English and provide numerous examples. There's nothing wrong with this approach. However, as many Spanish speaking English teachers probably know, it can be helpful to quickly explain the concept in Spanish. Then the lesson can turn back to English. Instead of spending fifteen minutes trying to explain the present perfect in English, a one minute explanation has done the trick. Still, if you don't speak Spanish - or any other language that your students speak - what's a teacher to do? Enter Google Translate. Google Translate offers the most powerful, free online translation tools available. This English teaching helps and tips article focuses on using Google Translate to help out in difficult situations, as well as provide ideas on how to use Google Translate in class in lesson plans.
What does Google Translate Offer?
Google has a translation function which works reasonably well with simple chunks, and it can translate from English to other languages and back again.
The automatic translation falls apart when the translation is sensitive to context, or ambiguous. For single words it is quite useful, but there are other web-based dictionaries that are probably more useful.
In class you can use Google translate for several purposes:
• For checking new vocabulary
• To examine the differences between the way different languages express ideas. For example, English only has one word for ‘you’- Japanese has many
• To highlight the perils of direct/automated translation! One of my favourite ways of doing this (especially with some students from the far east, who have a particular fondness for electronic dictionaries) is to translate an ambiguous term such as ‘like’ one way, choose one of the many translations, and translate it back again. Repeat this process a few times and you will soon be very far from where you started!
Ways to Use Google Translate - Translation in Class
• Have students write short texts in English, and translate them into their original language. Using Google Translate for translation can help students catch grammatical errors by spotting these errors in the translations.
• Use authentic resources, but provide the URL and have students translate the original into their target language. This will help out when it comes to difficult vocabulary. Make sure that students use Google Translate only after they have first read the article in English.
• For beginners, ask students to first write short texts in their mother tongue. Have them translate into English and ask them to tweak the translation.
• Provide your own short text and let Google Translate into the class' target language(s). Ask students to read the translation and then try to come up with the English original text.
• If all else fails, use Google Translate as a bilingual dictionary.
click here to go to Google translate
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