Random Quote
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
---- Mitch Hedberg
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
---- Gail Godwin
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
---- Terry Pratchett
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
---- Albert Einstein
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
---- Lily Tomlin
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
---- Galileo Galilei
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
---- Doug Larson
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
---- Fred Allen
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
---- John Ciardi
it's probably not a good idea to underestimate my ability to make an ass out of myself—just when I seem to have it under control, I'll turn around and surprise you.
---- Tenser said the Tensor
I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.
---- Albert Einstein
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
---- Charlemagne
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
---- M. Cartmill
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.”
---- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 -1832)
Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I'll have a long beard by the time I read them.
---- Arnold Lobel
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.
---- Edward R. Murrow
The voodoo priest and all his powders were as nothing compared to espresso, cappuccino, and mocha, which are stronger than all the religions of the world combined, and perhaps stronger than the human soul itself.
---- Mark Helprin, Memoir from Antproof Case, 1995
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.
---- Jack Lynch
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
---- Terry Pratchett
As soon as I buy the moose head, I have to go pick up some KY jelly.
---- Mary Roninette Kowal
The least of learning is done in the classrooms
---- Thomas Merton
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?"
---- Kelvin Throop III
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
---- Isaac Newton
Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.
---- Kin Hubbard
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
---- Pablo Picasso
web translation for homework
Today I’m replying to my students final homework assignment. I finished two classes and the entries were excellent, but I’m now looking at entries for my third class and 4 out of the first 5 students have used a web translation service to submit thier homework. If they only knew how obvious it is that they have cheated.
Here is the homework assignment:
What is the most useful thing you learned from studying the book strategies for Success (surveys)? What will you do to continue learning English after this semester is over? Tell me about your English goals and your plan to achieve them.
and here are parts of the incomprehensible answers:
This study is over but it is to do an English study steadily. Also the language institute to come and go and to buy study the book and. English it does, real life anger it will do. It listens to an example it reads it dialogs the English book and in English, the CNN will see foreign nation broadcasting which is same…Homework it does to initially, it got irritated., but homework with the box there is it will be able to think plentifully and also the English capability increases plentifully,
and another example:
From the Mr. Blinger the possibility of learning the many thing th was to 2 semester. me against an speach it taught and it gave, there was the possibility of learning it was a fun in game of the multi branch and or method of team homework. in the future it studies the english conversational teaching material, school it is a thought which tries to come and go. conversation and it make a mistake but afraid instead of, to have a confidence and to practice and study.
And finally a typical though somewhat short example of a student who actually wrote their own entry without the aid of internet translation. As you can see there are mistakes but it is understandable and actually answers the questions. Needless to say she will get a good grade:
I think, most useful thing is chapter7 to me. because I have found out things I didnn’t know by this research. so from now on I can study more efficiently.
According to survey, my stronger intelligece is musical intelligence. and second stronger intelligence is bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. base on this result, I will listen to pop-song everyday, and watch DVD in english from this semester overd. I think, this is good way to study english.
In the future, I will attainment of my english goal until next year. as you know, my english goal is freetalking with foreign friends. and improve my english skill for my dream.(I wanna be news report.) so, I will, listen to pop-song and try to sing it everyday. and I will watch DVD or video in english as much as possible.
My reply to the students who actually wrote responses themselves has been personalized with commentary about what they wrote and encouragement for their future studies. However students who have used a translation service get this:
I’m confused by what you wrote. Actually I do not understand any of it, perhaps if you take a little more time and write it again more carefully I will be able to understand.
I didn’t tell them I knew they cheated but if they actually read that and think about it, they should realize that they have been busted?
Comments? thoughts? would you respond differently? Do you have a solution to prevent this in the future?
Rachel wrote 107 words on Tuesday Nov 30, 2004 at 05:11 PM
Hmmm…I don’t know anything about Korean culture, but I would just be up front with them. Say that you know they used online translators, which unfortunately never translate complete sentences accurately. Personally, I find babelfish.altavista.com helpful in learning Chinese - the translation won’t make sense but it is often faster than using a dictionary to look up each individual word. Then I can begin to piece together actual meanings and sentences. If you instruct your students to use these translators as a tool rather than a way to cheat, maybe that would be best. At least they will realize that English teachers can’t be fooled so easily!
gordsellar wrote 482 words on Thursday Dec 2, 2004 at 12:14 AM
There are a few things you can do. The first is to require they hand in the “drafts” of their assignments. I always require any writing assignments to be typed, for legibility; but I also require handwritten outlines and drafts (at least one draft) to show that (a) they put some thought into the structure of the thing, and (b) they actually wrote it. This will make the assignments you got much harder for them to submit: don’t accept assignments without drafts and outlines attached.
Okay, some losers will still use the translator apps. There are always a few. You can do a few things to combat this—and I would have, this term, except my class is very small and we’re working intensively on only a few writing projects… I see handwritten drafts for weeks before anything is typed.
You can show how a human translator makes Korean sentences understandable in English:
밥� 먹었어요.
becomes
I ate (dinner, or whatever).
instead of Babelfish’s:
It ate the rice.
You can even include a diagramming of the sentence with the various potential meanings of ë°¥, and illustrating why there is suddenly an “it” in the sentence for the omitted subject in the Korean sentence.
In fact, I can see the document in my mind.
In any case, I consider cases of machine translation usage in an intensive writing class as equivalent to telling a teacher to fuck himself. In other words, I consider them equivalent to plagiarism or non-submission of the assignment, but more insulting. I tell students up-front that the text has the following characteristics that are just like a machine translation does—and which are not standard ESL-learner errors—and if I’m in a generous mood, I tell them to sit down right now and handwrite it again or get an F on the assignment.
Of course, for conversation classes I almost never give written homework which has to be submitted to me, beyond notebook-styled filling in the blanks on occasional homework sheets, on which I consider content and effort more important than grammar or form.
When push comes to shove, most students will admit they used a translator. Then it’s a case of attitude and track record, in my opinion. Someone who tries in class, who has a good attitude, but who gave in to desperation, will get cut some slack. Someone who sat like a log, missed classes consistently, and got absolutely no work done on an assignment for two or three weeks before it was due and then suddenly “tried” for a whole hour before deciding to use a “shortcut” gets not one iota of sympathy from me.
I only have a couple of examples of the latter type in my writing class these days, while I have a couple of the former, as well as the vast majority who try pretty hard and who are getting pretty good results, too.
gordsellar wrote 74 words on Thursday Dec 2, 2004 at 12:18 AM
Oh, and by the way, don’t count on them getting the message that you know they cheated. It’s a nuance, and a pretty high-up one. I’d be direct about it. I’d write “don’t use machine translators” on the assignment when handing it back unmarked. The assignment, after all, was to write something in English, not to write it in Korean and have it translated by someone else or a machine. It’s just that simple.