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Translation Drills: Words vs Phrases | ||
Tags: Drill/exercise | Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5885 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 1 of 7 02 November 2013 at 10:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've toyed with translation drills over the last few years, but haven't made them a main part of my study. I've been giving them a go more recently, but there's something I'm not entirely sure on.
At first, I started doing translation drills of individual words. For example: "Hast du den Koffer schon ausgepackt?" becomes "[Have] du den Koffer schon ausgepackt?" "Hast [you] den Koffer schon ausgepackt?" "Hast du [the] Koffer schon ausgepackt?" "Hast du den [suitcase] schon ausgepackt?" "Hast du den Koffer [already] ausgepackt?" "Hast du den Koffer schon [unpacked]?" But after doing that for a few weeks, I started wondering if doing complete phrases, even complete short sentences, wouldn't have been a better/more efficient. "[Have you] den Koffer schon [unpacked]?" "Hast du [the suitcase already] ausgepackt?" and then eventually "[Have you already unpacked the suitcase?]" It seems doing translation drills test you on vocab while giving you review of grammar, while drills on phrases/sentences drills you on both. In that case, for active review, I'd think phrases/sentences for would better. But, if it weren't bad enough that in many cases you could use a different word and still be correct for the word translations, for the phrases/sentences you could not only use different words and still be correct, but also structure the sentence differently and still be correct. In that case, phrases/sentences would be worse and might even give you the impression that some things are wrong when they are in fact correct. Generally, I don't use translation drills for sentences unless I've already run them through a lot of passive review, so hopefully by the time I get to doing translations on them, I'll know enough that if I use different words/structures/etc. my answer was still correct or not. There's always going to be some uncertainty with this. But I wanted to get the forum's thoughts on this. Is drilling on phrases/sentences too much of a risk where it comes to uncertainty of your answer? Does doing translation drills on individual words help with actively forming phrases and complete sentences more than I'm giving it credit for? Edited by sabotai on 03 November 2013 at 12:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 7 02 November 2013 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The whole point of cloze deletion is removing part of the sentence and avoiding turning it into a translation quiz/exercise. There's a related thread here.
Also, if you do a lot of recognition reps and then add a "translate the sentence" card, you'll be remembering the sentence rather than producing it from scratch. Entire sentences should be recognition only. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3 of 7 03 November 2013 at 12:45am | IP Logged | |||||
What's the difference between remembering the sentence and producing it from scratch? I remember from decades ago that "la plume de ma tante" means "the pen of my aunt" - not, I must admit, a phrase I'd need very often, but if I did, I could "produce it", or am I "remembering it"? and if so, does it matter? I could switch it to "la voiture de ma tante" or "la plume de mon oncle/ma soeur/mon frère/etc", i.e. I've "remembered" a basic structure, but "produced" some "new" language. Is that then ok? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5885 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French | Message 4 of 7 03 November 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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[QUOTE=Serpent] The whole point of cloze deletion is removing part of the sentence and avoiding turning it into a translation quiz/exercise. There's a related thread here.
I've been using the cloze deletion functionality in Anki and LwT for this which is why i called it that. I should have said translation drills. I'll edit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 7 03 November 2013 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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Please no French when you're asking for my opinion :D
Phrases are better in this regard... but if you SRS translation pairs, you'll most likely remember the entire sentence and you won't actually think about the grammar involved. If that's only a handful of cards, that's okay (especially for proverbs/sentences with idioms/famous quotes that you *want* to remember correctly). But your whole deck shouldn't be like this. Reviewing will be exhausting too, but more importantly the focus here is on your SRS "performance" (whether you got it right) and not actual learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 7 03 November 2013 at 1:14am | IP Logged | |||||
In general I don't believe in learning by translating, but if you do it, it's much better to translate more texts/sentences than to do the same ones repeatedly. You can post your translations on lang-8 if you're worried about accuracy. Or just don't look at them again - if you make a mistake once, it won't stick. If you reread what you wrote, it might. Edited by Serpent on 03 November 2013 at 1:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 7 03 November 2013 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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FSI translation drills are whole sentences.
Vocabulearn does individual words. I always found I got more out of the whole sentence method. The problem with individual words is there are so many of them, so it tends to make acquiring vocabulary a grind for me that I've tended to abandon after a month or two of dilegence. That doesn't mean it's a waste of time, only that it's not a long term strategy for me. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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