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Wall posters

Students can collate words on posters that either:


(1) have direct translations and are very similar in both L1 and English
(2) false friends words that seem similar but are actually different in meaning and often cause
confusion
(3) words that they often want to use but find hard to remember in English students can choose
their own criteria for such word banks.
They can also expand into collecting grammatical structures in similar groups

Idioms students can collect local idioms and expressions with literal translations and
then the English equivalents (e.g. an Arabic idiom translates into The son of a duck is a
floater and the English equivalent is Fruit doesnt fall far from the tree. It is interesting
to discover how similar many such expressions are even when countries and cultures
seem very distant.

Students and teacher can discuss the precise meaning of the English in L1

Students can add L1 translations/explanations to their language records where appropriate

Here are some activities that are particularly appealing to teenagers. They are based on students
translating from L1 into English in fun contexts, and that lead to a very focussed production of
spoken English:
1. Traditional songs
Students (in pairs or threes) choose a song in their own language and translate into
English (an added challenge is to try to make it still singable to the original tune).
2. Soap operas
Similarly students choose a scene from their favourite soap opera or movie and translate
into English. They can act these scenes out in front of the class later.
3. Dubbing
Students can do the soap opera activity using a videoed episode of the programme, turn
down the sound and speak over their English versions (this may be more appealing to
more self-conscious students).

4. Interpreters
In threes, students take on the roles of an interviewer, a famous person who can only
speak L1 and an interpreter. They must carry out an interview (TV interviews are good as
students think about body language too) with the interpreter facilitating the
communication. This is possible at low as well as high levels.
The above activities encourage students to focus on translating meaning and appropriate register,
not just translate single words.

Translation chains
Students stand or sit in lines, the first student is given a sentence in L1, they must translate it into
English and tell it to the next person, who then translates it back into L1 and tells it to the next
student etc until the end of the line.
This can be done orally or can be written. This can be hilarious and can lead into interesting
discussions about how the translations went wrong.

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