I would like to poll the group on the question of translation back into written, not spoken, L1 in our vPQA slide presentations. What do people think? Julie has no L1 translation on her vPQA slides.
I wrote to Andrew:
…I don’t know how I feel about the translation. I’m like 55% for it and 45% against it. I saw Julie do it without translation in her classroom but when I looked at yours there it seemed helpful really. It’s not like you are saying the words, it’s just visual. I don’t know what to think….
Andrew replied:
…yeah who knows? Beyond the new structures I wasn’t using anything they were not already familiar with so I don’t see how it would matter one way or the other. The main reason why I put the translations was because, other than the 4%, they don’t always notice the difference between he puts on versus to put on, yet. Also, they weren’t all going to notice that to say “waits for somebody/something” doesn’t require the preposition. I think next time I will just translate the troublesome areas and leave the simple sentences alone and have someone translate it like Julie mentioned….
I replied to Andrew and asked Julie also:
We may be making a big decision about vPQA here and I want it to be the right one. Julie what do you think about doing partial translation of the Spanish words in a slide show? I personally don’t know what to think. I do know that I like seeing the words in L1 on the screen as long as they aren’t spoken out loud. Your thoughts as to why we keep it in the L2 only?
Julie replied:
Andrew and Ben,
This is a great discussion…I would like to weigh in on my logic behind why I sequence and create the slides the way I do. On the initial slide we have the visual and the meaning. At this point we establish the meaning and the gesture. This is the only slide that I have English on, because I feel that if I sequence well and gradually shelter and scaffold the subsequent slides, there should’t be a need for English. From there I have a slide utilizing the word in context. I continue with a few more slides like this and may even show the words using the infinitive, past tense or a different form of the present tense so they see it in other ways. At this point it is crucial to find an appropriate and effective visual to accompany the text so it serves as an aid in understanding the text if there are any comprehension difficulties. Then I read the sentence slowly aloud and may use the pointer to emphasize the different words. From there, I will ask for a volunteer to translate the sentence. If the translation is not perfectly translated, I will ask for another volunteer or just randomly call on someone to try again. The reason why I do not put the English up there is really two-fold. First, they can become lazy and just read the English (because why not? It is the easy route…and then they don’t push themselves to try and understand it)…also I like to just keep the slides simple and clean-Spanish text and visual. It keeps things uniform. But the goal is always for them to be entirely in the target language so when I eventually get to the question slide, they can read the options and then raise their hands to keep the discussion going. I may also have the support of the sentence stem so they answer in complete sentences and use the new vocabulary structure. I hope this helps! Let me know if you are confused at all. Thanks!
Julie
Ben: ny thoughts from the group are very welcome, as I personally see this as a critical question that is connected to years of past discussion here about the role of L1 in our L2 classrooms.