Greetings all,
Please find below the link to Week 2 Task. I was not sure whether this could be considered as authentic material or not, nevertheless I tried it with my students and they had fun with it so I thought it's a good idea to share it. It is taken from a Beijing Hotel brochure.
I am looking forward to your comments and feedback!
Have a lovely day :)!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fSsWD2hLqs_I1yR-4vjB3NaAIcFTs2Aw
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fSsWD2hLqs_I1yR-4vjB3NaAIcFTs2Aw
Hi Rina,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your materials. Yes, I’d say this can be classified as authentic! What you’ve written here is a lesson plan with suggested activities – that’s fine but ‘materials’ would be instructions for the students (a worksheet or alternative), with the text either incorporated into it or presented separately).
I do have a reservation about how this might come across as making fun of Chinese people. I say this because of “Translated as only the Chinese can!”
When we write materials we write for our own contexts of course but i do wonder what would happen if these materials were downloaded forom the internet and used with a mixed nationality class which included a student from China. I’d be interested in seeing what other participants think. It’s good to focus on errors and this kind of thing can be amusing and motivating but I think I’d prefer to use a collection of smaller bad translations from different countries around the world – including my own. Food for thought!
I totally agree with you, my students didn’t mention this in our classes and that’s why it didn’t cross my mind. The text came as such and I was more focused on how the language was used.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I can make some adjusments and upload a new file these days, before Sunday’s session.
Thank you for your comment :) !! I really appreciate it.
Hi Rina, I enjoyed reading your task, the material is fun, and I'm sure your students would have a great time using them. I had a look at the original post too. So I think if you use it from there it's fine to use "Translated as only the Chinese can" but I would come back to that point with the class, to elicit whether they agree with the generalization, and what were the publishers motivations. I also wonder as to the authenticity of the translation. Has it been modified to be funnier? I think that's fine too, just to ask the question to the students. I also thought initially, when reading the materials, that the hotel may want an image for other Chinese guests that they are international, and some of these translations would then be quite acceptable and not at all wrong in Chinese English, and in fact sound quite poetic. I see the same in Japanese English printed on t-shirts. Here's a funny story: my Canadian friend got a Chinese character tattooed on his arm, but when he came to Asia, he found out that it doesn't have the meaning he was told.. In conclusion, I think that the material is funny, and would make good lesson material, but like Katherine, maybe direct the students' conclusions away from generalizations. I also think that signs can be great opportunities for learning, and it would be even better if there were Chinese students in your class, to enrich the discussion.
ReplyDelete