Skip to main content

Easy scaffolded translations for beginners

A while ago I produced a set of seven scaffolded translations from French into English for beginners. The format is as below, with a text in French, followed by a gapped translation into English. This sort of task might fit well towards the end of a sequence of work on the relevant topic. In the case below the topic would be pets. You could, of course, use the source text separately for other types of work such as reading aloud, true/false, questions in French and so on. As a follow-up task pupils could write their own paragraph based on the source material. You can find all seven texts on frenchteacher.net.

Here is the example:



Mon chien s’appelle Bouba. Il a cinq ans. C’est un labrador noir.  On l’a trouvé dans un refuge pour chiens.

Il est énorme et très mignon. Quand je rentre de l’école, il saute et veut jouer dans le jardin. Il adore courir, jouer à la balle et se baigner dans la rivière ou dans la mer.

Il mange beaucoup et en particulier il adore le chocolat et les gâteaux. Il adore monter en voiture avec la famille et faire des promenades à la campagne. Mon père le promène tous les jours.

Quand on a des invités à la maison il s’excite et aboie beaucoup. La nuit il couche dans la cuisine. Quand il va se coucher, il prend toujours un de mes chaussons pour dormir, il s'en sert comme d'un doudou.

C’est un chien vraiment adorable et très affectueux. Je l’adore.

And here is the gapped text:


My dog _______ Bouba. He is ____ years old. He’s a _____ Labrador. We found him in a dog ____________.

He is ____ and very _______. When I get ____ from school he jumps up and wants to _____ in the garden. He _____ running about, playing ____ and swimming in the _____ or the ___.

He ____a lot and in particular he loves ________ and _____. He loves going out in the ___ with the ______ and going for _____ in the __________. My father _____ him every ___.

When we ____  ______ in the house he gets _______ and barks _____. At _____ he sleeps in the ______. When he goes to ___ he takes one of my _______ and ____ it like a cuddly ___.

He’s a really _______  and very ___________ dog. I ____ him.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a langua...
Post a Comment
Read more

The 2026 GCSE subject content is published!

Two DfE documents were published today. The first was the response to the consultation about the proposed new GCSE (originally due in October 2021) and the second is the subject content document which, ultimately, is of most interest to MFL teachers in England. Here is the link  to the document.  We are talking about an exam to be done from 2026 (current Y7s). There is always a tendency for sceptical teachers to think that consultations are a bit of a sham and that the DfE will just go ahead and do what they want when it comes to exam reform. In this case, the responses to the original proposals were mixed, and most certainly hostile as far as exam boards and professional associations representing the MFL community, universities, head teachers and awarding bodies are concerned. What has emerged does reveal some significant changes which take account of a number of criticisms levelled at the proposals. As I read it, the most important changes relate to vocabulary and the issue ...
5 comments
Read more

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans, ...
1 comment
Read more