I haver read a lot in social media about the use of Google Translate by students during online teaching and how its use is becoming a real issue for Reading and Writing tasks while teaching online. In fact, this is a problem that MFL teachers face even in normal lessons: many teachers conduct writing tasks in lessons and not as homework, to prevent their students from using Google Translate. In the case of Reading tasks, sharing a photo of a text, rather than the word document, makes it more difficult for students to paste that text in Google Translate, but what about writing?
WHY DO STUDENTS USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE?
In most cases students use it because they want to say things beyond their ability/level. Over the years, I have made the mistake to set up as homework, an open ended task or project, which has become a catastrophe as students were not linguistically fully prepared for it, or it was far too abstract, so they turned to Google Translate, defeating the purpose of the task and hindering their linguistic ability!
This turns to occur at KS3 and KS4. It seems that when students want to be creative and impress us they turn to Google Translate! How ironic!
How did I deal with this issue?
By modelling language and thinking, first, of the written/oral task or tasks I would like my students to be able to carry out by the end of a unit and start working backwards: planning the language, the structures and the activities which will prepare them to complete this open ended project or task. Asking students to write a fairy tale, poem, film script, film review, thoughts about lockdown, or a comic without careful planning the linguistic content that they will need to master, in order to complete the task, it is an invitation to Google Translate and a waste of time. This is particularly true, the lower the linguistic level in our students, say Y7-Y9.
HOW TO MINIMISE GOOGLE TRANSLATE USE
Firstly, I don't think we can prevent Google Translate use completely, unless we carry out writing tasks in lessons, which I think is a pity: I like using lessons for interactive, collaborative activities and oral tasks as much as possible! Unless doing Timed Writing with Y11s, a test, or collaborative writing in pairs/groups, I tend not to use lesson time for individual writing tasks.
Once I have in my mind the final task or tasks that I want my students to be able to produce and I decide the language they will need to do so, I provide students with a wide range of scaffolds in their learning journey so that throughout lessons they embed and assimilate as much language as possible, which they can use and manipulate relatively confidently in an open task, so they do not feel the need to use Google Translate to be creative.
How?
Firstly, through the use of Sentence Builders. Since I started using these three years ago, my students turn less and less to Google Translate. That is a fact.
I think of some final tasks, in relation to a topic, and I create a Sentence Builder to help students create such tasks at the end of a unit.
I present the Sentence Builder content, in Covid Times, via a pre-recorded video, modelling pronunciation and asking students to repeat after me (they do record themselves using the Audio Insert feature in Onenote). Then, we would spend many lessons practising these Sentence Builders through listening, reading and translation activities.
Currently, using spiral.ac allows me to carry out many of the listening activities I would do in normal lessons: Dictation, Delayed Dictation, Finish the sentence, Translation both ways, Manipulation of Sentence Builders to different tenses etc...
At a second stage, LearningApps, Textivate, Flippity, Wheel of Names, Quizizz, Carousel Learning, Genially and Deck Toys tasks, help me enormously to make students practise the structures I want them to master in order to become schemas of their long term memory! This process, especially at the moment, can be lengthy! That's why less is more! Only when I have evidence that students have pretty much assimilated our Sentence Builders, I would set a writing, creative task. On a post on how digital tools can support Sentence Builders click here.
The task will be based on the Sentence Builder studied and/or on previous ones, with elements of creativity, which would have been also rehearsed in the previous structured practise stage of learning. When given the task, students are encouraged to use their Sentence Builder as much as possible and they also have access to a grammar section in their Onenote, to make reference to different verb endings. It works! Most of my students DO NOT use Google Translate because they can use some set structures from memory, although spelling mistakes may occur, and have gone through a planned scaffolded learning process of the needed structures.
Jumping to the creative stage of learning to early tends to lead to the use Google Translate.
DO I FORBID THE USE OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE?
No, I don't. I think that Google Translate, if used properly, is a fantastic resource! I wish I had had something like that when I was learning English!
My students are allowed to use Google Translate to say something that they genuinely cannot say and they really want to LEARN how to say it! This MUST only be a few sentences, never a paragraph, and they must highlight it in their writing task.
When I read their work, they are honest about Google Translate use. In many cases, although Google Translate is getting better, the given translation, especially if an idiom, is wrong! That is a powerful message for them!!! At that point I will write the right translation in their writing.
What do they do next?
All my students have a personal Random Quizlet for vocab they encounter in reading, listening, oral or writing tasks. When students read or listen to my feedback from a writing task, they are given time, or it is part of their next homework, to include their new, chosen Google sentence in their Random Quizlet and learn it as any other vocab. Doing this, gives them more chance to reuse the structure/ sentence they wanted desperately to say, gives them ownership of their learning and makes them proud!
Still, I have some students who abuse the system, but they are the small, small, minority, the vast majority do use Google Translate responsibly!
No comments:
Post a Comment