On technology and translators: Is this the end of learning languages?

Posted on May 23, 2013 by

There will come a day when a babble fish app will be able to translate and interpret multiple languages in real time.   Is this the end of learning languages?  Perhaps.  But what a shame.   For what profit is there in gaining the whole grammar but losing your soul?

In the short story Funes el memorioso, Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges describes the fictitious Ireneo Funes, a young man possessing an impeccably accurate, infinite memory.  Although this intellectual gift allows Funes to pick up multiple languages with tremendous app-like ease, the narrator witnesses the surprising limits to such prowess.  Borges writes,

“(Funes) Había aprendido sin esfuerzo el inglés, el francés, el portugués, el latín.  Sospecho, sin embargo, que no era muy capaz de pensar.  Pensar es olvidar diferencias, es generalizar, abstraer.  En el abarrotado mundo de Funes no había sino detalles, casi inmediatos.”

[(Funes) had effortlessly learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin.  I suspect, nevertheless, that he wasn't very capable of thinking.  To think is to forget differences, to generalize, to abstract.  In the overcrowded world of Funes there was nothing but details, one after another.*]

So this guy Funes could have knocked most standardized tests out of the park and earned 5s on all his AP language exams to boot.  So what?  In the story he sits alone and stares out a window to relieve his mind from its relentless collection of information–tiny truths– that he could never form into big Truths (if such things exist) or anything approaching insight or understanding.   Thus he missed the point–and the value–not only of speaking another language, but of learning it.

Translators, even the best ones, are liars:  well-meaning liars, but liars nonetheless.  Anyone familiar with more than one language knows it’s virtually impossible to simply replace a word in one language with a word in another.  How one expresses politeness linguistically, for example, can vary wildly even within the same language depending on the cultural context.  Yet translators give the impression that what is said in one language can be reflected in the other like a mirror or a math equation (A=B, and that is that).  A break-through occurs when a language student finally realizes she needs to let go of the native language and immerse herself in the second language in order to fully communicate.  While floating around in the second language she may even realize that the world looks different.  This is the space in which insight and understanding can grow.

The new translator apps remind me of an old story:  the original Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum.  In the book, unlike the movie, the Emerald City isn’t really emerald.  All citizens and visitors are required to have glasses with green lenses firmly locked over their eyes while they are within the city limits.  In this same way these apps, as they continue to improve, may allow their users to communicate in certain situations, but the user will never have the key to unlock the lens.  In time, the users may even forget that the locked lens exists–maybe we will all begin to insist that the world, wherever we look, is green and we will forget that it is really many colors.

So here’s to all those who teach and learn languages, and here’s to the mistakes we make, the faux pas we commit and the humility we cultivate (like it or not) so we can connect with others on this small planet.

*This is my poor translation.  I believe the phrase “casi inmediatos” at the end of the paragraph really has the idea of things that “almost touch” or adjoin each other.  The description of details in Funes’ mind, then, might be something like pixels on a screen or dots in a work by Georges Serrat.  Due to the constant avalanche of information that Funes’ prodigious memory provides him, he lacks the mental space necessary to step back and interpret possible relationships between and among the dots.

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más actividades para la primavera

Posted on April 22, 2013 by

En el huerto de primavera:  try something new! We have a school garden and I was surprised when we visited the garden recently that most of my Spanish 2 students couldn’t predict what they would find growing there in the spring (versus the summer or fall).  As our garden teacher suggested, students tasted col rizada, espinaca and melisa (toronjil) by pulling off some of the leaves and snacking on them right there.

chickweed or "la pamplina" picture from veggiegardeningtips.com

chickweed or “la pamplina” picture from veggiegardeningtips.com

There also were some edible weeds growing in several beds, including chickweed (la pamplina o la maruja) and what later turned out to be Pennsylvania bittercress (a member of the mustard family-not sure how to translate it into Spanish!).

My students had just started keeping journals about their health and I had challenged them to try two new healthy foods or activities during the two week assignment.  So I gave them this sheet I created with nutritional information for col rizada, espinaca, melisa and pamplina, along with some recipes they could try at home (all in Spanish, of course).

picture from almanac.com (they have growing tips, too)

picture from almanac.com (they have growing tips, too)

But you don’t need a garden to plant something unique and tasty with your class!  What’s in a name?  In Spanish the flower is called taco de reina, capuchinas, llagas de Cristo….. in indigenous languages (I believe), pelonchile, texado..…in English, nasturtium.  Native to Columbia, Peru and Ecuador, this spicy, edible plant can be started from seed in small yogurt containers and replanted in larger macetas, window boxes or in the ground.  They’re good with full to partial sun, sprout in 7-14 days and in another two months you’ll have flowers and leaves you can eat!  They don’t need any special fertilizer or care–in fact too much fertilizer or plant food will inhibit the growth of blooms and make the plants produce lots of leaves, instead.   To eat, put them in a salad or sandwich, use them as a garnish or snack on them right from the plant.  Here’s a brief info sheet (three copies to a page) students took home with them after we planted nasturtium seeds in containers.

 

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actividades para la primavera: planeta sano, yo san@

Posted on April 21, 2013 by

 Here’s an assignment to integrate sustainability themes into a Spanish 2 unit on health vocabulary.  Grammar points=preterit and imperfect contrast, commands (formal or informal), future tense or future expressions (ir + a + infinitivo, etc.) and possibly present tense subjunctive.

Keep a healthy life journal-El diario para llevar una vida sana:

Prep:  We began with the vocabulary presented in the textbook, but broke it down into three categories:  dormir lo suficiente, comer comidas sanas y hacer ejercicio (o actividades sanas).

Students completed this activity about dormir-lo-suficiente with information that I summarized from an article.

The “Qué hay en tu plato” campaign from the USDA on making healthy food choices isn’t nearly as helpful as the previous mi pirámide campaign (that web site was recently inactivated).  However, this graphic of the “plate” is a good visual resource to show the quantities of comidas sanas necessary to make-up a healthy diet. Generally speaking, half of each meal should consist of vegetables and fruits (of varying colors).

There is a direct connection between healthy environments and healthy people.  To consider this idea in relationship to the food we eat, students read and responded to these consejos para comprar comidas sanas para el planeta y para mí that I condensed from the Spanish web site vidasostenible.org.  To make the above activities communicative and practice critical thinking skills, students compared their responses with a partner, predicted the most popular responses in the class, rated the most helpful suggestions and defended their ideas.  They could also modify suggestions and/or identify suggestions that are the most realistic/unrealistic for them.

Hacer yoga was on the textbook’s vocab list.  I was lucky enough to be able to invite a Spanish-speaking yoga instructor into class.  However, a simple activity like dar un paseo can have surprising health benefits and can inspire communities to protect or create green spaces.  If you have a safe place to walk with trees, you could take students for a walk in which–just like in kindergarten, but now in Spanish!–they note the signs and sounds of spring.  Here’s an article from the NY Times which explains the findings of a recent study:  taking a walk among trees (for city folk)  has a positive impact on memory and relieves stress and brain fatigue  (I suppose you’d have to feel safe in the park, though…)

the activity:  Students were assigned a two-week personal health journal.   First they wrote a plan in which they identified 1-3 goals (future tense or future expressions).  Each day they were required to write (in complete sentences using the preterit) two or three things they did para llevar una vida sana.  They needed to include details related to their goals, for example “Comí comidas sanas.” would be insufficient.  They would need to write something like “Comí 5 porciones de verduras y fruta.  En el almuerzo comí una ensalada con lechuga, pimientos y zanahorias, para una merienda comí una manzana y en la cena comí espinaca y fresas.”  Their goals could also be related to dormir lo suficiente o hacer ejercicio.  They could also choose to follow one of the consejos para el planeta by buying produce locally, buying fair trade labeled products when possible or choosing packaged food with the fewest ingredients.

the follow-up: Students wrote a paragraph to describe how they felt when they did the activities and how they feel now (imperfect/preterit/present tenses).  They made recommendations (positive and/or negative) for other young people based on their experiences (commands or subjunctive as softened command).  They included whether or not they will continue to do the activities they wrote about (future).  I made this assignment personal and they could turn it in on paper or digitally.  Of course, you could also turn this assignment into a blog and have students comment or give encouragement to each other.  (It would also be easier to track whether or not students were writing daily)

In my next post I’ll include some companion activities that can help students discover a few new vegetables, try some local edible “weeds” and plant edible flowers (from South America!) that can be grown in containers.

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los fenómenos naturales y los seres humanos

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

Our essential question for the official, textbook related “environment” chapter in our Spanish 3 class is “How does the natural world impact you (human beings)?  How do you (human beings) impact the natural world?  This question, of course, unnaturally plucks humans out of the natural world.  Part of what we discover during the course of the unit–I hope–is that we are part of the ecosystem in which we live–rather than living “on top of” the ecosystem as we often imagine ourselves to be.

To reinforce the systems approach to our relationship with the natural world, I used the fenómenos chart found on page 6 of  the folleto riesgos parte 1 produced by the makers of Riesgolandia.    This chart has the advantage of being simple, visual and relatively short.  It also ties together some of the weather and geography vocabulary we had been learning from the textbook and the short story Una Carta a Dios.

Screen shot 2013-04-08 at 11.15.05 PM

I created this worksheet to provide some structure for our reflections and followed the think-pair-share model for many of the activities.  Students were asked to consider the geographical features associated with the fenómenos, and then what fenómenos can result from other fenómenos on the chart.  Un incendio, for example, can lead to deforestación and contaminación del aire.  Deforestación can lead to deslizamientos, etc.  Another way to do this would be to put these on the board or project to a smartboard and have students draw arrows.

Students can also indicate which fenómenos could be caused by human activity.  We eventually concluded that they all could be caused by humans.  Even tormentas eléctricas and huracanes can be impacted by global warming and a recent study in Oklahoma concluded that terremotos can potentially be provoked by certain techniques used in drilling for oil and hydraulic fracking.  Plagas have multiple causes, including sequías and/or the introduction of invasive species by humans.  As this news report from November 2012 describes, a sequía in Mexico led to a plaga of beetles that now is causing deforestación.  Plagas of beetles have also attacked large swaths of pine forest ecosystems in Montana.

Here’s a mini-project for students to explore and share specific examples of the above in a communicative context.(past tenses verb practice:  present perfect indicative, present perfect subjunctive preterit, imperfect)

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cosas que puedes hacer con Cajas de Cartón, parte 2

Posted on March 20, 2013 by

Environment and sense of place  Environment, climate and geography play an out-sized role in the lives of Panchito’s family, and others like them, by  pushing them towards new places as single crops planted in large scale for the national market ripen in succession.  This may seem obvious, however those who grew up in urban and suburban settings with supermarkets full of strawberries year-round may be disconnected from this process and benefit from a trip outside.

Vocabulary from the story can be recycled to compare growing seasons for strawberries, grapes and cotton.  If you live in California, you can check if the seasons are still roughly the same.  Outside of California, you can compare these seasons with your own.  It’s helpful to include planting, duration of season and harvest time in these comparisons.  In New Jersey, for example, strawberries are a late spring/early summer crop and are in season for only a few short weeks.  Students can also be assigned a trip to the grocery store over a weekend to note the origins of fruits and vegetables being sold (law requires labeling of country of origin).  Why are there so many different origins?  What else does this variety of origins tell us?

imagesIf you’re lucky enough to have a school garden, I recommend a visit.  We tend to read this story in Spanish 3 at the end of September, sometimes at the beginning of October, but usually before the first real frost. Here are two garden activities I’ve done that, all together, take about a 50 minute class period.

In the school garden we have a long row of strawberry plants along a fence and, on occasion, we can find several cotton plants growing in a bed.  Maybe you have access to some grape vines.  Many of my students have trouble imaging what a day might be like for Panchito and think he might, in some respects, have it easy (no school, yay!).  Others might have never actually seen the plants that produce these fruits.  So we examine the physical characteristics of the plants (large or small, tall or short, etc.), note whether or not they’re “in season” and then imagine that we’re harvesting.  In order to pick (pizcar) the strawberries, for example, it’s necessary to crouch down.  Of course, you can’t stay in one place, you also have to move along the row.  I try to get them to role-play this (I’m Ito) for about 5 minutes, though they usually don’t last that long, especially if it’s a warm, sunny day.  We return to the beginning of the story and I have them do the math to calculate how many hours per week Panchito spends picking strawberries.  This also might be a good moment to reflect on how the workers are paid.  There’s evidence in the story, for example, when papá is in the vineyard adding up the quantity of grapes they’ve picked.  Apparently they’re not paid per hour, but their income is based on how fast they can fill the boxes-regardless of weather conditions or other factors.

Although New Jersey isn’t known for cotton production (the plants need a long, warm growing season), our garden teacher has managed to coax a few plants to maturity and has even harvested a few of the pods.  In the story Panchito doesn’t pick cotton because he’s too young, but Roberto and his papá do.  Students can reflect on the differences in seasons (compared to strawberries and grapes), height of the plants and body position necessary to harvest the pods.  We have a few mature pods saved from previous years and we pass these around the class.  When mature, the pods become stiff and sharp, making it difficult (and sometimes painful) to pull out the cotton. The seeds grow inside the fluffy part of the cotton and can be felt, but not seen, unless it’s cut or pulled apart.  Since we don’t have any grape vines, I rely on photographs showing people harvesting the bunches.

Another garden activity that can help students situate themselves in their local environment is a scavenger hunt.  They work in pairs and first on their list is to walk around the garden and come up with 4-5 fruits and vegetables that are in season, and 4-5 fruits and vegetables that are out of season.  Most of the beds in the garden are labeled in English, Spanish, Chinese and French, so it’s possible for them to identify plants that don’t currently have fruits or vegetables.  (For those plants without labels in Spanish, I go out before class and put notecards next to or on the plants).  For the second part of the scavenger hunt, students need to find the herbs that I listed in Spanish on their sheet and pick a couple leaves:  one to bring back and one to taste.  They note their reactions on the paper.  When we gather back together students share their  experiences and some describe how they use these herbs in cooking or for teas.  On a good day, we make tea with some of the herbs.  For students with little experience seeing food outside of packages, these simple activities can be memorable.

Digging deeper. To paraphrase Andrew Marvell, if you have world enough and time to let your vegetable love grow (that is what he meant, isn’t it?), you could plant a bed with your class.  The class could work in pairs or small groups, research a plant, including growing season, space needs, even nutritional value, taste, use, etc., and then propose it.  Which of the plants proposed can be planted together?  Which can’t?  Why?

This also might be a good moment to explore which plants, vegetables and fruits are native to your region and which are not.  Also, what is the impact of large, monoculture agribusiness on the local environment (or even on the plants themselves)?

This leads to the next theme I hope to cover in cosas que puedes hacer con Cajas de Cartón, parte 3:  interconnectedness.

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soluciones

Posted on December 18, 2012 by

The blog 3.500 millones, sponsored by Madrid’s print and on-line newspaper El País, focuses on solutions to seemingly intractable problems such as la pobreza, la contaminación, el sobreconsumo y la indiferencia.  In their own words “3500 millones es la mitad de la población mundial. 3500 millones de personas condenadas cada día a la pobreza. ¿O no? Este blog es el relato de la contra-crisis y de sus protagonistas. Vivencias e iniciativas desde cada rincón del planeta que demuestran que lo más correcto es también lo más inteligente.”  Recent posts include Navidades sostenibles y solidarias; Salir de la crisis sin crear más pobreza;  Gitanos con estudios, Gitanos con futuro; y Soy agricultor peruano.  In addition to provocative articles that report on issues often marginalized in the news, you can find compelling photos, an occasional short video and links to ongs (all in Spanish, of course).  Students should find lots to consider and analyze when reading the posts and comments.  Exercises such as identifying fact vs opinion (or interpretation of facts), analyzing nested systems or the science behind the initiatives, finding and presenting “the most” interesting or effective idea on the blog are just some ways to create opportunities for students to use their emerging language skills to engage with the world.

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cosas que puedes hacer con Cajas de Cartón (el cuento corto), Parte 1

Posted on October 20, 2012 by

Students can get into Cajas de Cartón, the widely-read short story by Francisco Jiménez, by examining sustainability themes.  The ideas below focus on using the title to explore multiple perspectives and experiences within the story and beyond, as well creative ways to re-use and recycle boxes.  Future posts on Cajas de Cartón will focus on environmental themes, interconnectedness and solidarity.

Las cajas de cartón  Al examinar el título del cuento es útil examinar una caja de cartón actual.  Muéstrales una caja de cartón.  1.  ¿Cuál es la primera cosa que piensas al ver la caja de cartón?  Los alumnos deben anotar esta primera reacción.  2. Puedes dividir la clase en grupos y darle una caja de cartón a cada grupo.   3. Los grupos escriben descripciones de la caja de cartón (adjetivos) y las cosas que personas pueden hacer con las cajas de cartón (verbos infinitivos) EN la caja, usando marcadores.  Pueden buscar palabras en un diccionario si es necesario.  Los grupos pueden intercambiar las cajas, comparar su trabajo y añadirles más ideas a las cajas que reciben de los otros grupos.  Después, las cajas sirven como apoyo visual en la sala de clase.

Frecuentemente los alumnos piensan en maneras creativas de utilizar y reutilizar las cajas y piensan en reciclarlas.  Si quiero que los alumnos piensen en maneras “fuera de la caja” (ja ja) a veces ayuda si les doy un número (8 o 12) de maneras que necesitan poner en sus listas/en las cajas. Si necesitan un poco de inspiración, puedes mostrarles fotos de Caine’s Arcade, construido completamente de cajas de cartón (si haces google “Caine’s Arcade” vas a encontrar un montón de fotos).  Si conocen el mundo un poco, tal vez piensan en las personas sin hogar que viven en la calle y que utilizan las cajas de cartón para cama.  Si no conocen esta experiencia, puedes mostrarles el video de la canción la Historia de Juan por Juanes.  Otras maneras de reutilizar una caja de cartón incluyen usarlas en la huerta para cultivar plantas o en el abono.  Si tienes tiempo (¡ojalá que tuviera más tiempo!) sería interesante dejar que los niños busquen y compartan imágenes–o que peguen las imágenes en sus cajas junto con las palabras.  (¡Una caja soñando con su próxima vida!)  Si preguntan, una caja de cartón dura más o menos un año en descomponerse (degradarse).

Al terminar de leer el cuento puedes volver al asunto del título.  ¿Es un buen título?  ¿Por qué los personajes (por ejemplo Panchito y los hermanitos) tienen reacciones distintas frente las cajas de cartón?  Los alumnos pueden comparar las reacciones personales que notaron al principio y compararlas con las reacciones de Panchito.  ¿Son iguales o diferentes?  ¿A qué se debe la diferencia (o la semejanza)?

Aquí puedes destacar la importancia de considerar las perspectivas múltiples cuando tratamos de comunicarnos con otras personas.  El mismo objeto puede inspirar emociones y reacciones muy diferentes por las vidas que hemos vivido.  ¿Has experimentado alguna vez un conflicto o un malentendido que se basó en interpretar algo de manera distinta de los demás?  ¿Resolviste el problema?  ¿Cómo?

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