Translation into the Target Language (with examples in several languages)

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.)

What a translation-focused resource looks like

Resources on TextActivities can be based on a text for rebuilding, on vocab / matching data for vocab practice, or on a combination of both. They can also include a "parallel text" in the L1.

For best results in terms of translation practice, your resource should ideally include all 3 components mentioned above:

  1. A short L2 text - this is the main text for text-rebuild
  2. A translation of that text into the L1 - this is the prompt for translation of the text into the L2
  3. Matching vocab items based on the text and translation - to practise the chunks that make up the text

To be honest, I would generally recommend including these 3 components in your TextActivities resources whatever your specific skill focus may be, as this then gives you more options in terms of how you can make effective use of the resource with your students.

Vocab / matching - practising the chunks

Since the main point of this post is to look at the text-rebuild activities, to practise working with the sort of texts that feature in the Higher tier GCSE translation part of the writing exams, I am not going to focus much on the vocab activities. After all, there are all sorts of websites that can be used to practise vocab, even if, admittedly, most are not as throrough in terms of the activities they provide as TextActivities is.

But I'll just mention the various match activity modes present as part of the Vocab / Matching activity menu. Assuming you have TTS enabled for the match component of your resource, you should see 6 match activity modes: 3 with L1 outputs and 3 with L2 outputs. For translation into the L2, we need to choose from those with L2 outputs. And if we only want the L1 text as the prompt, we should choose "L1 text>>L2 text", as shown in the image below:

(Just to explain the other L2 output modes: if we want to practise dictation, we'll choose "L2 audio>>L2 text", and if we want students to engage in a combination of dictation and translation (dictranslation??), we'll choose "L2 audio+L1 text>>L2 text".)

To have a play with the vocab activities, you can access the sample resource of your choice on one of the following links. Then click on the "Activity View" tab; then click on the "Activities" button to open the activty menu; then choose the "Vocab / Matching Activities" sub-menu (as shown in the image above).

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Translating the text - multiple scaffolds

In this section I'm going to provide examples of some of the scaffolded translation activities available.

First, though, a word about the parallel text. This button (pic below) is the one that is used to turn on or off the parallel text, and when accessing an activity via the resource page, you can do this as much as you like. Green = visible. Red = not visible. When setting a translation activity as part of an assignment, however, you will need to specify that you wish the parallel text to be made available.

So let's look at some example activities. 

Note that live links for 4 different languages - French, German, Italian and Spanish -  are provided for each activity featured.

Multi-choice (1 in 4 - also available as 1 in 3 / 1 in 6)

Students rebuild the text by selecting from the options available at each stage.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH 

Jigsaw rebuild (12 - also available as 6, 8, 18, 24)

Students click the blocks of text in the correct order to rebuild it.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Million

Students have to rebuild the whole text to win a million.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Speedread

Students attempt to rebuild the text against the clock, losing a life if their time runs out. They have 3 lives in total.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Word by word (also available as 3 by 3 / 2 by 2)

Students build the text 1 word (or 2, or 3) at a time.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Gap-fill (user-defined - also available as random)

Students click on words in the word list provided to fill the gaps in the L2 text. Gaps are ones specified by the person who created the resource, and the word options include "red herrings".

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Find the gap

For each section, students click to say where a word is missing, then select the correct word to fill the gap.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Space

For each section, students click to separate the words.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Jumbled words

For each section, students click the words in the correct order.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

No vowels

For each section, students type in the missing vowels.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

No consonants

For each section, students type in the missing consonants.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

50:50

For each section, students type in the missing letters.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Initials

For each section, students type in the missing letters. The initial letter of each word is provided.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Word shapes

For each section, students type in the missing letters. The shape of each word is provided.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Anagrams

Students click a word to select it, then click or type the letters in the correct order.

Click one of the language links to try out the activity:

FRENCH | GERMAN | ITALIAN | SPANISH

Gap-filling and spelling games!

At the bottom of the "Text Rebuild Activities" section of the activity menu is a section full of gap-filling and spelling games. We've already seen Million and Speedread. The others are games that randomly select parts of the text and students have to fill in the missing words or letters.

I'll let you find them for yourself by opening any of links provided on this page and using the activity menu to navigate to the activity of your choice :)

Pre-defined translation assignments

You can create assignments on TextActivities with any combination of activities from a single resource (up to 20 activities) simply by selecting activities from a version of the resource's activity menu. So you can build translation assignments using any combination of activities. (Make sure to include the parallel text though if you want student to have the L1 prompt for L2 text rebuild activities.)

You also have the option of choosing from one of the pre-defined assignment sets:

The pre-defined assignments offered in each class include several options whose focus is translation into the L2. With all of these, you select a set and then you can modify it if you wish, by changing parameters, reordering the activities, removing or adding activities, etc.

Here are the MATCH translation assignments. Images show activities available for an assignment based on the French translation resource featured in this post. The actual activities listed may vary slightly from resource to resource depending on things like word count per item or the number of matching items. Where a parallel text is included for MATCH activities, this is actually the L2 text to help students find the correct L2 response by referring to the text. The L1 prompt for the translation is provided by the L1 item in each matching pair:

  • MATCH L1>>L2 - MATCHING: Translation: matching activities where the aim for students is to select the correct match

  • MATCH L1>>L2 - WRITING: Translation: matching activities requiring students to reorder words or write/spell the missing text

  • MATCH L1>>L2 - ALL: Translation: combines the above 2 sets, moving from matching activities to word order activities to spelling activities

Here are the TEXT-REBUILD translation assignments. Images show activities available for an assignment based on the French translation resource featured in this post. The actual activities listed may vary slightly from resource to resource depending on things like word count. You will see from the images that, for most of the activities, the parallel text has been included. For TEXT-REBUILD activities, the parallel text is the L1 text, which serves as the prompt for the translation into the L2:

  • TEXT - BLOCKS: Translation: text-rebuild activities that require students to reorder the blocks of text

  • TEXT - WORDS: Translation: text-rebuild activities that require students to reorder words, fill gaps, separate words, etc

  • TEXT - LETTERS: Translation: text-rebuild activities requiring students to write out the text or spell out sections of text

  • TEXT - ALL: Translation: combines the above 3 sets, moving from blocks to words to letters, with a sprinkling of games to break it up a bit

As mentioned above, you can use these sets as a starting point to modify, add, remove, etc.

Translation focused competitions

If setting a competition on TextActivities, in which students have a free choice of activities and score points based on the number and accuracy of their interactions, you also have the option to add a specific focus.

You simply select one of the options in the dropdown box to change the focus.

The one pertaining to translation is "Write & Translate to L2 (Match+Text)"

The competition focus appears below the title on the competition scoreboard in the Competitions tab:

The effect of this is to limit the activity menu on the competitions page to only:

  • match activities with the mode L1 text>>L2 text

  • all of the text-rebuild activities, but with TTS not available as support.

For the competition page, if a resource has a parallel text, it will show by default for all activities. Students are free to turn it on or off, just as they are free to choose from the activities that are available.

Hope this helps you to see how much translation practice is available via the TextActivities platform :)