Up until now, all interactive activities on TextActivities.com have worked by automatically checking interactions immediately. This gives students instant feedback on every single move.

So if rebuilding a text in blocks, clicking the correct next block produces a positive "ping" noise and inserts the block in the next text slot, whereas clicking the wrong next block produces a negative sound and stops you in your tracks. Same with putting words in order, filling gaps, separating words, filling in letters, etc.

• Correct interaction = positive sound and keep advancing.
  
  
• Incorrect interaction = negative sound and progress blocked until you find the next correct block, word, gap, letter, etc.

This "immediate feedback" is still the default for the vast majority of the activities. It makes sense for the "gamey" activities, and it stops students from having to write out a whole sentence before realising they were on the wrong track.

Adding more challenge / Requiring greater reflection

BUT I decided I wanted to offer something that puts students on the spot a bit more.

The new Submit mode requires them to build their full response before submitting it for analysis.

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Pedagogical benefits of the "Space" or "Break the flow" activity (SLA perspective)

Core task: segmenting a continuous L2 letter string into words

>> TRY IT YOURSELF: French | German | Italian | Spanish

This task targets a fundamental but often implicit skill in L2 development: word segmentation. By removing spaces and punctuation, learners are forced to engage in active parsing rather than passive recognition.

From an SLA perspective, the task promotes:

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STUDY MY OWN TEXT

This guide assumes that you have a student account on TextActivities.com

Sign in and go to the "Resources" page, and you'll see that there is a "STUDY MY OWN TEXT" button (see image above). Click this to access the page that allows you to create a new student resource (or edit an existing one).

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The ###chunked### marker (added to the top of the main text box) is a hangover from Textivate that you may not be aware is available on TextActivities. Read on for information about how to use this feature and what effect it will have on the activities created.

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 ASSIGNMENTS &  COMPETITIONS WITH NO DUE DATE 

Assignment data with full score breakdowns is available for 6 months following submission. All assignment scores are deleted after 1 year. (i.e. this has not changed)

This is a feature that was available on Textivate and has been requested by several teachers. I hope you find it useful 🙂

TextActivities does not store any sensitive data at all. Any student data that is stored relates only to resource or competition points scores and the completion of assignments.

Student accounts are set up by their teachers or by their school admins and are NOT based on email addresses. (No student interaction with TextActivities requires the use of an email address).

• Student usernames are automatically generated by our system based on the names entered by their teachers when they set up their accounts
• Student passwords are 4-digit numerical PINs which students cannot change (but teachers can)

Student usernames on TextActivities look like this:

ABC-FirstnameLastname (see explanation below)

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The Power of Dual-Prompt Dictation-Translation

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This post features an idea I've written about previously on the Textivate blog. The text used (and the inspiration) came originally from an idea posted by Steve Smith (of FrenchTeacher.net) on his blog a few years ago in a post entitled "Google Translate beaters". In the post, Steve suggests a translation activity based on providing students with an L1 and L2 text, each with different words or chunks missing. Steve's idea looks a bit like what has now become known as "tangled translation", the difference being that in tangled translation the text is presented as one text that alternates between the L1 and the L2. But it's very similar in that students are required to complete both the L1 and L2 versions of the text by referring to the bits that are in the other language and translating.

A crucial part of Steve's original idea is that students are guided towards the required answer by the inclusion of letter spaces indicating the length of each word to be typed, in both the L1 and the L2. Steve suggests this as a way of providing 2-way translation which, because of the chopped up nature of each text and the dashed gaps, is practically impossible to complete using translation tools such as Google Translate. An excellent activity! :o)

Translation in TextActivities works in a similar way to Steve's example because it specifies the letter gaps to be completed. i.e. it will only accept the pre-defined translation. This makes it difficult to google translate your L1 text to the L2 because GT will only work as long as the GT translation matches the pre-defined L2 text provided by the teacher.

TextActivities translation into the L2 is a useful activity to push students to practise particular language; particular words, chunks and expressions that we think they should be able to say / write. (This blog post on working with model texts explores this in more detail.)

However, it occurred to me that we could make the activity slightly more challenging and even less google-translatable by providing L1 notes rather than the "Full English" as it were...

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TextActivities is a great tool for practising translation into the L2 / the target language.

You can create your own resources in a matter of minutes and then have access to all sorts of activity options that will give your students TONS of translation practice. 

Getting your students used to doing this sort of thing from the get-go can only help to improve their ability to write accurately in the L2, including translation, and arguably the sorts of noticing and implicit grammar practice involved in these tasks will make them more competent speakers of the L2 as well.

(The activities generated can also include audio, so dictation and listening practice are also available. But this post focuses solely on activities with an L1 prompt that require students to translate that prompt into the target language.)

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