Students will demonstrate translation, reading and writing skills in French and English through texts chosen by them or given to them by teacher.
Hard copies of poems, lyrics of songs, spoken word, excerpts of plays, parts of movie screens, etc., in English and French taken from various sources such as plays, screenplays, poetry collections, as well as websites (ones found through The HipHop Circuit such as The Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive , Paris-Poèmes , MC Solaar , Michel Astre ). CD of MC Solaar song Quartier Nord . Bilingual dictionaries.
This lesson will be mostly group work. Walk around and make sure students are working; be especially available for those who have reading/writing problems. This will be occasion for some students to work on their Poetry Slam project if they have chosen to perform a text translated from English. Also, make sure all students have chosen to work with appropriate material that doesn’t have any explicit language.
Students will have to turn in written translations (both French to English and English to French) by end of unit.
Reading; writing; translation; communicating in groups.
Translation is hard even for people who are completely bilingual in source and target languages. Make sure that texts aren’t too complex and maybe have students be accountable for only small parts of them. Give everyone lots of help, especially students who have difficulty with reading and writing – maybe give them simpler, smaller samples. 34 to 36 minutes of group work might be too much for one lesson, but if students work on texts they like, it might work. I should help process by telling them what different texts are about to help them choose something that will keep their interest (if I know students well, maybe lead them towards texts I think they would like).
