4 Model Activities
As a teacher, you know that even when you explain anything in five steps, modeling still helps. Therefore, this section includes a breakdown of how to implement two sample activities using the five steps from the prior section. We’ll start with a proverbs activity and then move to a sales and marketing activity. While the implementation of both activities is explained here, full lesson plans for these activities, together with all attachments, are included in the last section of this handbook.
Example 1: Proverbs Activity
Matching proverbs activity:
Provide a list of proverbs in English and in the second language; design a match activity in which students find either the English or the L2 proverb corresponding to the one provided; then have students comment on the differences, in particular any cultural differences.
Step 1: Determine what your students can do
Our teacher determined that her intermediate students were linguistically ready to do a translation activity with proverbs in Spanish.
Step 2: Determine if you have content that you can build around
Since proverbs are short yet loaded with linguistic and cultural information, many teachers and curriculum designers find that it makes sense to incorporate them into second language teaching. Our teacher was already using proverbs as a way to introduce a fable unit, so she decided to expand how she taught the proverbs through this translation activity.
Step 3: Determine your goals or objectives
One way to approach setting objectives for these activities is to determine what learning objectives you want to meet through the translation activity and then combine those with the ACTFL proficiency standards. For example, after considering the proposed roles that translation can serve in language learning, such as linguistic or cultural awareness (see Section 4, Step 3 of this Manual, Colina & Lafford, 2017), in our example it was determined that that the primary translation focus of this activity would be cultural, so cultural learning as a translation goal was overlaid onto the Intermediate-Mid ACTFL proficiency standards for Interpersonal Communication as well as the Can-Do Statements. The resultant objectives for the proverbs translation activity can be seen in Table 1.
Table 1
Objectives:
Students will use translation to be able to
- Identify the underlying message in Spanish proverbs
- Explain how proverbs are related to cultural perspectives
- Use proverbs in English and Spanish to make cultural comparisons
Standards:
- I can identify the underlying message in Spanish proverbs.
- In my own and other cultures, I can explain how proverbs are related to cultural perspectives.
- I can use proverbs in English and Spanish to make cultural comparisons.
Other objectives, such as linguistic or literacy goals, for example, could be added in as well. This could depend on how you want the activity to align with what you are already doing in your curriculum, or it could depend on new types