Fifteen Ways to Stop Students Translating

Fifteen Ways to Stop Students Translating

The fashion for the use or not of L1 in the classroom and language
learning more generally tends to come in waves, and the present trend is
to write about how an English-only classroom is unrealistic,
non-politically correct or an unfair advantage in the market place for
native English speaking teachers. I absolutely accept all these points,
and have written before on good uses of L1 and how to decide whether you
are using too much and too little. The fact remains, though, that most
use of L1 in the world’s classrooms right now is holding up people’s
progress with learning English rather than being the kind of best
practice that could help them, and cutting out L1 completely is a much
simpler concept to understand and bring into practice than trying to
achieve optimal use of L1. It is worth noting also that many of the
leading advocates of sensible use of L1 are people who first became
capable of teaching and learning languages without the use of L1 who
then took the conscious choice to reintroduce it and are therefore in a
perfect position to do so- unlike people who in the present climate
might never be taught how to eliminate L1 if and when they want to. I
would therefore argue that advice on how to minimize or eliminate L1 is
more useful for most teachers and learners in the world as it is now
than advice on how to use L1 more productively, and so will tackle that
subject in two articles including the one below.

1. Use English-English dictionaries
If students need convincing of the need for this, try taking a
translation of a personality word from a bilingual dictionary and seeing
if it really matches the definition in a good English-English
dictionary (obviously having chosen one in advance that doesn’t
translate, such as something that is positive in English but negative in
the closest word in L1). If they need convincing of it being possible
to switch to an English-English dictionary, start with a dictionary that
is lower than their present language level, e.g. an Elementary
learner’s dictionary. Also try to avoid using it with topics that are
difficult or impossible to explain without translation, such as things
in the natural world like vegetables.

2. Write definitions and explanations in English
Students will find it difficult to write their own explanations of
grammar and vocabulary in English, so start by putting short and easy to
copy explanations up on the board for all new points and getting them
to copy them into their notebooks as they are (without any L1). By using
the techniques below, you should eventually be able to move onto them
writing their own explanations in English without your help.

3. The Definitions Game
One way of moving students towards being able to write their own
explanations in English without translating is playing games where they
have to explain words without using it or any variations on it, e.g.
saying “An animal with a very long nose and big ears that lives in
Africa” so that their partner can guess they are explaining “elephant”.
This ties in well with language points like relative clauses and
infinitives of purpose. Playing this game should also help them prepare
for communicating in real time without getting stuck on words they don’t
know in English, and so hopefully lead onto them not even needing the
words in L1 to pop into their heads first while speaking. A fun way of
extending their lateral thinking skills even further is a variation on
this game called Taboo, where they also have to avoid three words
written on the card in their definitions, e.g. explaining
“communication” without saying “talk”, “telephone” or “listen” (as well
as the variations on “communication” like “communicate” and
“communicator” that they also can’t say in The Definitions Game)

4. Synonyms
Another way of making L1 appear manageable and giving them the tools to
link words together without needing L1 is to choose words that the
students already know an approximate synonym of, e.g. choosing
“enormous” and “huge” when doing extreme adjectives because they already
know “big”.

5. Opposites
Giving the opposites of most things you present is a great way of
teaching two things at the same time and of giving them something to
attach each word to in their brains that is shorter and simpler than a
definition. When they have learnt lots of opposites, there are then many
games they can play with them such as Grammar Reversi or Opposites
Tennis.

6. Visuals
Using drawings can avoid translation when presenting new language, give
them something to copy down in their notebooks, and give them a survival
tool they might need when words completely fail them in their travels
etc. Teaching them to interpret and draw their own timelines can have
similar uses for grammar. There is also the chance that they will be
able to remember the English word or grammatical form from the image in
their heads rather than through internal translation, or at least that
practicing this will help them work towards being able to manage that.
Pictionary can be a great way of practicing this.

7. Mime
Mime is another survival skill they will need sooner or later that can
also help their brains form the connection “English word = action”
rather than “English word = word in my language = action”. In a similar
way to Pictionary and The Definitions Game/ Taboo, students can mime
words, expressions or even whole sentences for their partners to guess.

8. Get them using words and concepts that don’t translate
As well as convincing them consciously that translation doesn’t always
work, getting them to work with words like “parsnip”, “mantelpiece” or
“fast bowler” that they have never come across even as a concept before
and won’t find one word translations in their bilingual dictionaries can
help their brains adapt to remembering those things as pictures,
actions, definitions, synonyms, antonyms etc rather than as
translations. This will hopefully mean they will then go onto use the
same tactics with words and concepts they could have used translation
with.

9. Learn language in “chunks”
Another way of helping them avoid the need for translation is to give
them “chunks” of language that they can produce without needing to think
about every word, e.g. learning “make breakfast” or “Buckingham Palace”
instead of learning “breakfast” or “palace”. If they want to learn this
whole phrase correctly, it makes little sense to learn the translations
of each part. If we then force them to produce and understand such
language in real time communication their brains should switch to
concentrating on its connections to other English words rather than
translations to L1 in order to increasing processing speed.

10. Sentence stems
More than the collocations given as examples above, the chunks of
language students seem to be best at understanding and producing without
bothering about the meaning of every word are sentence stems such as “I
wonder if you could tell me…” and “Thanks for coming. Today we need to
talk about…”

11. Fixed phrases
In a similar way of to Sentence Stems above, students tend to find “How
do you do?” and “Have a good weekend” possible to use and remember
without having to analyse and translate them. There is a chance that
they are just translating the whole phrase in their heads, perhaps even
wrongly, so one way of making the meaning clear and giving them a
correct English connection in their heads is to teach all fixed phases
as question-reply, e.g. “How are you?” “I’m fine, thanks”.

12. Think of language as functions
I think one reason students have less problem with translation when
learning fixed phrases and sentence stems than when learning
collocations (and certainly than when learning single words) is that a
lot of the language fits in with a functional/ situational syllabus. If
students know that using certain phrases results in them being given an
imaginary cup of tea, they hardly need to bother with translation in
their heads. If you also give them a way of writing it down to remember,
such as question-reply as suggested above, they should never need
translation of any sort to deal with requests, invitations etc.

13. Language in lots of context
Another way of looking at the success of fixed phrases and sentence
stems when taught well is that they tend to be taught in a lot of
context, e.g. with situations set by pictures in the textbook, or in the
real interactions of the classroom. The same thing should work for
other kinds of language by taking them out of dialogues and other texts,
introducing them during communicative tasks etc.

14. Speed
If you force them to read, listen and speak quicker and quicker, this
should force them to abandon the slow and inefficient method of
translating every word.

15. Plan in English
If they have a plan written in English for what they are going to say in
each paragraph of their essay or email, they should hopefully be able
to fill in the gaps without any need for translation.