English Proficiency Programme
Expression Exercise
(Common Local Language to English: CLL2Eng)
The spirit of this exercise is that those students of English, for whom
it is not the first language, tend to write (and even speak) English by
mentally mapping the information content of each sentence from another
language in which their command is significantly better than English.
At an advanced stage, we may shun this practice, but in early stages, we
cannot avoid it. Indeed, we can utilize it as a strategy in a class in
which we can manage to have a linguistic convergence of students at one
Common Local Language (CLL).
The process:
- Select a running text in CLL, which may be a story, an excerpt
from a novel, a news article or an essay that would match the intellectual
level and taste of the class. You may rephrase the sentences here and
there to facilitate translation to suit the level (or Module) of the class.
- Call a student (in turn) to the board and dictate him/her a sentence
of the text to write on the board.
- Instruct/guide him to dissect the sentence into its constituent units
- by separately underlining them.
- Next the student translates (expresses) each of the underlined units
into English.
- The next task is to write "1", "2", "3" etc under the translated units
to signify the order in which it will make sense in English.
- After assembly of the units in the planned order, the assembled matter
in CLL may be a fine translation of the original sentence or it may need
some final adjustment in some cases to be a correct sentence in English.
- Needless to mention, appearance of idiomatic expressions and out of turn
special constructs (in English or in CLL) may call for special measures.
- After two (or three) sentences are processed like this, send this student
back to his/her seat and continue the exercise with another student.
At every stage of the process, the class is to be engaged actively with
the student at the board through suggestions, criticisms, improvements etc.
As such, there is no harm if every student could not be brought to the board
in the limited time allocated for this activity.
However, the selected text may not be over within the time.
The remaining part can be covered through home-work or class-work,
for which you may decide to demand only the translation - leaving the option
of systematic dissection and ordering with the students.
Note:
- This literal exact translation leaves no scope of confusions
remaining unnoticed and uncorrected.
- Students will find this technique useful when they try to compose
a piece in English that they hope to make really 'sophisticated' with
the best of their thought poured into it.
- Among students, the confidence that whatever they can construct
in their own language they can express in English as well, and the
will to try it out is a great morale-booster.
- Once students develop enough speed and maturity in English, they will
start composing directly in English and the crutch of the CLL will
get discarded automatically.
See also: Interpretation (Eng2CLL 1-2-3)