Using machine translation as a parallel text to access literature for modern language learning

Parallel texts in the form of Graded Readers have a long tradition in foreign language learning. When presenting the translation in the reader’s first language alongside the target language text, parallel texts offer access to literary texts, to their stories, characters, plot developments, and cultural content, without the need for time-consuming vocabulary or grammar searches, which would otherwise distract from the enjoyment of the texts. This chapter will describe and evaluate a teaching activity that makes use of Google translation as parallel text. This activity exploits the inconsistencies and obvious mistakes of the English machine translation as incentives to undertake close reading of the affected passages in the original foreign language text and to suggest a better translation. It allows beginners and intermediate students to benefit from the aesthetic qualities of literary texts while developing their grammatical accuracy and cultural understanding through focus on form. The evaluation of its effectiveness will be based on class discussions. Pedagogic translation exercises are used to promote deep engagement with the foreign language. At the same time, the students learn to appreciate the complexities of translation both as a process and as a product and develop a critical understanding of translated, especially machine translated, text. The opportunity to improve inferior machine translations while engaging with rich, multi-layered literary texts is shown to be a motivating activity for language learners, who also develop their digital literacy with an understanding of the shortcomings of machine translations.</jats:p

Literature in language learning: new approaches

Language skill courses might not be always effective enough in improving learners&#39; communicative skills and motivating them to learn, particularly when adopting old style grammar-translation based methods. Involving creative writing as a&nbsp;..

Ab Initio Language Teaching in British Higher Education The Case of German

As entries for UK school exams in modern foreign languages decrease, this book serves the urgent need for research and guidance on ab initio learning and teaching in higher education

Ab Initio Language Teaching in British Higher Education The Case of German - Editors' introduction

Drawing extensively on the expertise of teachers of German in universities across the UK, this volume offers an overview of recent trends, new pedagogical approaches and practical guidance for teaching at beginners level in the higher ..

Signal transducer of inflammation gp130 modulates atherosclerosis in mice and man

Liver-derived acute phase proteins (APPs) emerged as powerful predictors of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular events, but their functional role in atherosclerosis remains enigmatic. We report that the gp130 receptor, which is a key component of the inflammatory signaling pathway within hepatocytes, influences the risk of atherosclerosis in a hepatocyte-specific gp130 knockout. Mice on an atherosclerosis-prone genetic background exhibit less aortic atherosclerosis (P <0.05) with decreased plaque macrophages (P <0.01). Translating these findings into humans, we show that genetic variation within the human gp130 homologue, interleukin 6 signal transducer (IL6ST), is significantly associated with coronary artery disease (CAD; P <0.05). We further show a significant association of atherosclerotic disease at the ostium of the coronary arteries (P <0.005) as a clinically important and heritable subphenotype in a large sample of families with myocardial infarction (MI) and a second independent population-based cohort. Our results reveal a central role of a hepatocyte-specific, gp130-dependent acute phase reaction for plaque development in a murine model of atherosclerosis, and further implicate UST as a genetic susceptibility factor for CAD and MI in humans. Thus, the acute phase reaction should be considered an important target for future drug development in the management of CAD