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Humanising Language Teaching
Year 4; Issue 6; November 02
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From Paraphrasing to translating

Type of class: monolingual

Level: elementary to advanced

Purpose: to help the students explore the multiple language realisations a set of thoughts can have in each language.

  1. Bring two short English texts to class, each copied so you have enough for half the number of students in the class.
  2. Give one text to one half of the class, one side of the room, and one to the other half.
    Ask the students to work in pairs, paraphrasing the text they have.
    Go round helping them with the transformation.
  3. Ask each pair to exchange their paraphrase with a pair the other side of the room. They do not exchange the original texts.
  4. Ask them now to translate the paraphrase into mother tongue.
  5. They hand the mother tongue text back to their “partner pair” the other side of the room. Ask the pairs to do a mother tongue paraphrase of the text they have just received.
  6. Ask the “paired” pairs to sit together and compare the four texts:

      English original
      English paraphrase
      Translation into Mother tongue
      Mother tongue translation-paraphrase.

  7. Draw the group together and comment on any language points you want everybody to notice.


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