Zooming on the silent minority – Reaching passive learners despite technology

 

[Zoom image*]

There is the maxim of 80/20 stating that 20 percent of your effort goes to achieving 80 of the results and vice versa. Besides being a translator, I am an English lecturer, with more than 25 years of experience teaching English to engineering students at the Braude College of Engineering in Israel. We strive to teach all first year students the four basic language skills, specifically reading, writing, speaking and listening. In teaching, given a heterogeneous class, the challenge is not reaching the vast majority of active and/or knowledgeable students but instead the minority suffering from passive behavior and weak backgrounds. The forced use of Zoom as the means of teaching has only made it more difficult to reach these students, forcing all teachers to reconsider how to impact those students.

To define the problem, every class has a certain percentage of students that suffers from both passive learning habits and a deficient background knowledge, creating the conditions for failure in terms of grades and, more importantly, a damaging lack of knowledge in the future. Passive students fundamentally accept their lack of understanding regardless of the psychological cost. In terms of behavior, they sit in class and seemingly pay attention but in fact understand very little of the lesson. They avoid asking questions in front of their peers, whether as a result of personality, culture or both, thus hiding their lack of comprehension. At home, on their own, they make an attempt to apply the taught material, generally with poor results as they did not understand it in class, but do not seek additional help. They often consult with students in the same boat because of a shared culture or to avoid appearing stupid to socially distant peers. This same behavior would not be academically disastrous if the students retained sufficient knowledge of the material from previous courses. However, in too many cases, poor schools combined with ineffective work habits have created a serious knowledge deficiency that requires extraordinary effort to overcome. Thus, these challenged but silent students either fail the course or continue on without the knowledge they require in the following courses and their future careers.

In normal times, i.e., physical classrooms, teachers can identify these students through observation and quiet interaction. Experienced educators quickly notice those students that tend to avoid participation and asking questions. A discrete assessment of student comprehension during class exercises by looking over the student’s shoulder or asking questions makes it clear that the student’s silence is not golden. In other words, the student neither understands nor is taking action to rectify that situation. Repeated occurrence should turn on a red light signaling that this student needs extra help. In this case, the most effective technique is a quiet conversation before or after the lesson in order to identify the specific problem and suggest solutions or provide additional opportunities for further explanation. In practice, the success of this method, granted partial, is premised on transmitting the feeling of “I care” to that student, which, in turn, creates the motivation to make a greater effort to work through the difficulty and fight fatalism. The teacher generally must mentor these students on an ongoing basis to fundamentally change the situation but any progress is important to the future of that student.

Zoom removes many of the diagnostic tools and limits the ability of the teacher to communicate empathy and assess understanding. A lecturer using Zoom sees at most some 20 faces regardless of the size of the class. Even that amount depends on the issue of forcing students to keep their cameras on, not a simple matter. Furthermore, only one student can talk at a time, with a short but annoying gap between the transfer of speech right to another student. Any  dialogue is public, limiting private conversation to a written from on the chat, far from an ideal manner to communicate. Even worse, it is impossible to glance at a student’s answers during an assignment, leaving the teacher completely in the dark in regards to the level of actual understanding. Break rooms of various sizes allow more personal communication. However, there is an interplay between the size and number of groups, i.e, the smaller the groups are, the more jumping from group to group is required, which eats up time. So, breakout rooms alleviate the communication issues to a certain degree but are far from being equivalent to being there physically. Even quizzes, considered a practical even if flawed method of knowledge assessment, often express nothing since the students can share knowledge or copy at ease sitting in front of their own computer. In short, in Zoom, teachers often throw the knowledge into the cloud and hope for rain.

I, like most teachers, have tried to learn from the successes and failures of last semester’s Zoom teaching. I have two groups of 30 students this semester. Already some six weeks into the semester, I have identified several students that are “out of it” and merely attend class. In several cases, I have asked them to talk to me on Zoom at the end of the lesson when everybody has “left”. The results in terms of communication and establishing a bond have been far from acceptable. I do not feel that these conversations have created any momentum in terms of changing the learning approach of the student. More successfully, I have been much less tolerant, on the verge of brutal, on early assignments regardless of their actual weight in the final grade. From the start, I have been returning compositions and assignments back to the students to redo, providing specific instructions on what to fix in a private email message. In a few cases, I have warned students that they are in danger of failing the course if they do not make more effort, again specifying what is required in the email. When they have applied the constructive criticism, I have quickly praised their effort, of course. This honest but less emotionally communicative approach, forced upon me by the requirement to teach in Zoom, will hopefully lead to better results at the end of this semester as compared to last semester.

Viewing my efforts this semester, I have been spending almost 80% of time on these passive students, which represent more than 20% as a result of the difficulties of Zoom learning. Strong students almost always survive but the goal of education should be to reach all those with the potential to learn, not only those with the current ability. It is distressing to know that intelligent people will have their ambitions stalled because they were unable to overcome the block of an ineffective learning strategy on their own. As the ad on UK television says, teachers can make a difference if we only can figure just how to do so.

*Captions are vital for the blind.

Image: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/alexandra_koch-621802/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5231389">Alexandra_Koch</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=5231389">Pixabay</a>

Non-native bias? (in translation)

 

[Bearded dragons*]

At any get-together of translators, one topic that surely heats up the conversation is the virtue or lack thereof of translators translating into their non-native language. In its most extreme form, one side declares that non-native speakers, regardless of their language level, are unable to express themselves in writing like native sons and daughters, who have had a lifelong education in that language. On the other hand, those excluded translators retort by claiming that this generalization is, at best, a form of unjustified elitism and, at worst, an attempt to limit competition, noting that many native speakers, even translators, are unfamiliar with the grammar rules of their own language. As usual, the truth is more complex with the full expectation that many will disagree with me.

To clarify, it is clear that interpreters, as compared to translators, can and often should be natives in the source language, not target language, since their task often involves almost instantaneous understanding of the speech of people from all levels of society and a need to understand the subtext. For example, an APTI conference in Valencia, a professional interpreter recounted how difficult and important it was to understand the testimony of uneducated women in Yugoslavia during the War Crimes Tribunal because they were talking about rape, a taboo topic. The interpreter had to understand the code language of these people while the judges could cope with less-than-perfect English. So, the arguments below do not apply to interpreters.

To help non-translators understand the problem, it is first necessary to realize that the demands of written communication are different from those of spoken communication in terms of learning process and flexibility. Formal education is not required in order to speak a language. Numerous people worldwide have studied a foreign language, even for several years and are barely able to get a sentence out while others, with no education but merely the opportunity and necessity to use the language, not only express themselves clearly but live their daily lives in that language. By contrast, people attain the ability to express ideas in a clear, acceptable manner in writing through many years of formal schooling. To one degree or another, written language is a dialect that is only taught in schools although reading and speaking contribute to its acquisition. Furthermore, speaking is an instantaneous act that does not allow for editing and thus accepts individual differences in style and even grammar. When we judge spoken language, the essential issue is whether the listener understands with accuracy a secondary factor. It is true that people may note grammar and vocabulary errors, especially teachers and translators, but these mistakes are generally forgiven. On the other hand, written language, especially English, a hodgepodge of various roots, is a polished product, like a diamond. Since writers (and translators) have the time to edit, readers expect a perfect result in terms of grammar, syntax and style. The requirements of those elements may evolve but do so quite slowly. The “accepted” manner of writing, with small variations, is de rigueur. Any writer failing to comply with those rules is harshly judged as the sharp reactions to grammatical errors in comments in social media shows.  The scope of acceptable written communication is rather limited.

For this reason, native speakers generally categorically reject translation by non-natives in their language. Unless the foreigners were educated in that language from childhood, it is stated that they simply cannot write like a native but instead write in a hybrid style combining their native and second languages. Teachers call this language interference, which can also happen to natives after sufficient years living in a foreign country. Examples include Hebrish, where commas and preposition use is rather whimsical and Russian Engish, famous for its curious use of articles.  Consequently, translations by non-natives may be accurate in terms of content but will sound “translated”, not seamless, the legendary goal of all translation. Specifially,  Ideally, a proper translation should sound like it was an original work. Clearly, the vast majority of non-natives, Samual Beckett aside, are not capable of achieving that goal. Thus, in terms of attaining seamlessness, the nativists are correct.

Yet, supply and demand create a strong niche for non-native translators. First, even in the common language combinations such as Spanish-English, excellent non-native writing may be good enough for the customer or the customer may lack sufficient knowledge to detect the errors. On a larger scale, many languages used on one country with low population suffer from a lack of non-natives that have learned the language proficiently. For example, few Americans and Brits have learned Czech or Hungarian, to name a few. Thus, law students in the Czech Republics are also trained as English translators as there are insufficient numbers of native English translators in these combinations. In addition, the translation rates in a country may be too low to attract foreign-based translators, effectively giving local, non-native translators a virtual monopoly. The Russian Federation is the most striking example where non-native, local translation is the norm due to the price structure for the most part. Thus, in practice, non-native translation is rather common and acceptable in some markets.

As in most issues, the question whether it is acceptable or not for translators to translate into their non-native language is not black or white. Ideally, translators should only translate into their native language since they have the proper ear for that language. On the other hand, market conditions create a situation requiring translation by non-native speakers. Reality is often a shade of grey.

* Caption pictures to allow the blind access. Picture via Pixabay

From rags to riches – culinarily speaking

 

[Emperor with two servants*]

[Roasted chicken]

Apparently, life is dynamic not only for people but also for food, i.e., the status of given dish can radically change over time. For example, in a recent episode of Les Carnets de Julie, my favorite French culture and cooking show, the subject was poulet rôti, roasted chicken to the more proletariat among us. She recounted how the dish went from being a peasant dish to a royal delicacy through serendipity when the French king Henry IV (late 16^th century) chanced to eat it at a peasant’s hut during a hunting expedition. He then insisted that his royal chefs prepare it for him. This led me to consider other foods that have risen in the world and now appear in the menus of the world’s fanciest restaurant (at equally fancy prices).

For starters, we will order some soup. The elegant diner has a delicious choice of French onion soup, Mexican tripe soup, bouillabaisse and gazpacho. Le soupe à l’oignon

[Bouillabaise]

uses the simplest of ingredients, specifically beef bone, onions, dry bread and a little cheese, items that even the poorest French peasant could attain, to create the tastiest and most satisfying of rainy-day soups, almost a meal in itself. The aunt of Louis XV supposedly prepared it for the King after a long day of hunting. Tripe soup, menudo in Mexico, is a folk recipe for dealing with hangovers and is eaten for breakfast by many Mexican-Americans. However, the long time required to prepare it and its exoticness make it a special dish on a restaurant menu. Bouillabaisse was originally a fish soup prepared by fishermen from whatever fish was not sold but today is a delicacy prepared from the finest fish and priced accordingly. Finally, gazpacho, a cold tomato and pepper soup, has long been a Spanish favorite, especially on those hot summer days. Today, it is served and relished in restaurants in much colder climates.

[Oysters]

For the main course, many delicious items from the sea are available at a price of course. Scallops, known by the French as coquilles St. Jacques, were not considered a prime source of food for early New English settlers, whose descendants are now paying through the nose for that insult. Likewise, the Irish viewed oysters as food for the poor but were willing to walk long distances to attain them during the Great Potato Famine. Now they must work very hard to afford them. I must add that I had the extreme pleasure of eating two types of oysters at a Dublin restaurant, among the best I have ever eaten. I wish to thank my Irish colleague, Mr. Michael McCann, for treating me to them. He had no idea how much I enjoyed them. Shrimps, the stable of any respectable fish restaurant, was once used for fish bait. Calamari, a.k.a. squid, was once an inexpensive fish dish but, alas, but its price has increased with its adoption of an Italian name. Any of these working-class soups would be served at a fancy restaurant.

[Choucroute]

For those that prefer meat, our revolutionary menu features choucroute, frogs, snails, haggis and blood pudding, admittedly items not to everybody’s taste. The Alsatian highly valued plate of fermented cabbage and various preserved meats began its journey far away in China when some cabbages were simply forgotten.  Frogs were last resort of monks that were forbidden to eat meat because they were thought to be too fat but now are a rather pricy dish beyond the pocketbook of most churchmen. Snails was a high protein, low fat and easy access food commonly used eaten since prehistoric times. Now, they are a rarely eaten gourmet dish. Based on the principle of waste not, want not, Scottish haggis are a mixture of various internal organs, the taste of which can bring some Scottish to tears, whether out of pleasure or not. Those into extreme meat are willing to pay an arm and a leg to get their teeth into it. Likewise, why waste the blood when you use it produce a blood sausage or black pudding? The English seem to get great pleasure from it. I am not sure if it is available outside of the UK, however. These local meat dishes have acquired a world reputation.

[Truffles]

To accompany our main course, why serve rice or potatoes when Jerusalem artichokes, polenta, quinoa, ratatouille or even truffles are available? Sun roots, as these special artichokes are called, originally came from North America (as did tobacco and syphilis) but was basically ignored there as they can cause extreme stomach distress. Curiously, European chefs love this vegetable and often offer it as an alternative to potato puree. Chacun à son gout. Polenta, a paste made originally from local grains and then from cornmeal when corn arrived in Europe, is considered an exotic side although its origins are very peasant. Quinoa is a more modern gold digger, beginning as a basic staple grain in the South America and becoming a star performer, especially among vegetarians due to its high protein levels. Ratatouille began its career as a course vegetable stew but became a Hollywood star. However, the crėme de la crėme of accompaniments, to the point of being a main dish in itself, is truffles, that incredibly expensive fungus, some 4000 EUR per kilo, that began as a seasonal gathering food among peasants. Money talks. These side dishes have much reason to feel proud.

[Flan]

To end the meal on a sweet note, the social riser restaurant can offer flan, bread pudding or chocolate. Flan, a crème caramel, appropriate in the finest restaurants, is the result of Roman attempts to find something to do with surplus eggs. Clearly, necessity is the mother of invention. By contrast, bread pudding combines old bread, milk and a fat to create a tasty sweet. Apparently, the sum is often greater than the individual parts. In a riches to rags to riches story, chocolate began as a tribute to the Aztec kings, was thrown away by European traders and again rose to the top of the chart among pâtissiers with a secure position for the foreseeable future. It deserves a sweet life after such an up and down life. Regardless of their journey, these deserts are finally enjoying the sweet life.

To paraphrase a well-known saying, one era’s staple is another era’s gourmet. These are just a short list of foods that have experienced an upward change in status. It would be only fair to discuss those that have fallen from favor (or is that flavor?) but that is the subject of another post. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed the menu.

* Always caption pictures to allow access to the blind. All pictures via Pixabay.

Accent grave

 

[Chat cartoon*]

Non-natives are often poor speakers of a language for the basic reason that they don’t try to speak and learn like children do – trial and error. While children have little pride and are willing to be laughed at or with, they quickly forget their embarrassment, understand their mistake and master the language, sometimes better than their parents. By contrast, most adults feel ashamed when struggling to express themselves in a second language and avoid the learning process. Aside from grammar and vocabulary errors, foreigners often fear people’s reaction to their accent.  Interestingly enough, this accent is generally not an issue for listeners. In reality, pronunciation and intonation can be a greater problem but fortunately can be consciously improved with practice.

Many foreign speakers hate the sound of their own accent in a foreign language. They can easily detect the difference between their accent and that of native speakers, whether live ones or those on television. As a result, they feel second-class or worse. Curiously, in many cases, a foreign accent actually creates a favorable impression. Henry Kissinger, he legendary Secretary of State under Nixon, retained his heavy German accent and caused people to believe that he was quite perspicacious, a benefit in his role. My mother was born in France and did not study English due to the “War”. She arrived in New York in her 20’s and quickly became a top perfume salesperson because people believed that, being French, she must be familiar with perfume. Even ordinary folk seem much more exotic when speaking with a foreign accent. How many actresses were considered sexy merely because they spoke in a different way? Thus, it is perfectly fine, even beneficial sometimes, to speak with an accent, even a heavy one.

On the other hand, native speakers do not understand the difficulty faced by foreigners in pronouncing the problem sounds posed by each language. Some examples include the throated h and a in Hebrew and Arabic, the various varieties of r in Russian, English, French and Spanish among others, the English th, so dreaded by the French, and the two types of sh in Russian. Every language has its landmines that test the tongue of the foreigner. Having learned to say these sounds as small children, locals see their pronunciation as obvious and view their mangling as laziness or lack of caring, which it is admittedly sometimes true. Fortunately, it is possible to practice these sounds in the safety of your own home, alone or with a trusted accomplice, and perfect their pronunciation. My challenging French r word was serrurière, a female locksmith, which truly gets your r’s rolling. Once you can say them like the native, your status will increase enormously as will their appreciation of your language skill and knowledge. It is all of matter of practice and therefore attainable.

A more difficult challenge is intonation. In simple terms, each language has a unique song, ranging from flat to sing-song or even extreme highs and lows. Russian tends to be flat, dying in the end while French is up and down and Italian and Hebrew simply sing. This is one of the reasons that speakers of certain languages are considered to be hysterical while other are viewed as cold. Simply, the natural rise and fall of volume varies by language and depends on the emotional content of the sentences. Small children naturally absorb the accepted intonation, but adults find it hard to change their way of speaking. Yet, incorrect intonation makes it difficult for natives to understand you and even sometimes conveys the wrong message, such as unintended annoyance, anger or questioning. As in pronunciation, a little homework goes a long way into retraining your speech to be flatter or more expressive. Over time, a person can develop linguistic schizophrenia, speaking in a different intonation for each language. In other cases, the learned intonation starts entering the native intonation, creating a hybrid. In any case, even not so young adults can practice and reduce native-language interference in their intonation, thus increasing the perception of their language skill, a good result in itself, as well as ensuring that their intended meaning is transmitted. As the song goes, you got the power.

So, if mastering a foreign language is a matter of practice and the willingness to make and learn from errors, accent should not be a barrier. Proper pronunciation and intonation can and should be learned, without public embarrassment. It is such a wonderful feeling when a local tells you how well you speak the language. Enjoy. You have earned the compliment.

* Picture captions allow access to the sighted impaired.

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/clker-free-vector-images-3736/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=23713">Clker-Free-Vector-Images</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=23713">Pixabay</a>

Successful persona – I have got that feeling

 

[Success*]

At the 2019 American Translators Association conference in Palm Springs, I had an illuminating conversation with a young translator. After I asked how he was doing, he said that he felt that he didn’t belong there. My response was that I had felt the same way for many years. His remark touched on an issue that is not openly discussed. Clearly, the sense of not being a real professional is a difficult matter to be shared with your peers. The difficulty in feeling successful is the lack of a universal or even accepted definition although it is possible to note some measures of aspects. Even worse, it is a chicken-egg problem since self-belief in success serves as a precondition to it.

[Income chart]

The most common measure of success is income, however that is defined. The vast majority of people wish to be financially secure. The ambiguity arises from the definition of that concept. For some, just knowing that all bills will be paid this month provides great security while others require large sums in the bank, maybe millions, to provide that same sense of security. Most people are somewhere in between and aim to have some blend of flexibility on the monthly budget as well as sufficient bank reserves. This subjectivity creates a situation where the identical income can create a feeling of great security or insecurity, depending on the person and circumstances. The scene at the end of Dumas’ the Count of Monte Cristo where Baroness Danglers and Mercedes end the books with the identical fortunes and opposite conclusions demonstrates the subjective definition of wealth. Thus, it is impossible to say how much income is required to make a person feel successful, rendering irrelevant any attempt to equate success with income.

[Blue ribbon]

Another measure of success is professional skill, including recognition by peers and  by customers. Clearly, having pride in one’s work and belief in its proficiency create confidence. Yet, despite countless efforts to quantify good work, running a business is as much an art as a science. While there may be clear benchmarks, there are countless ways to achieve those goals. Furthermore, people rarely actually see their colleagues at work to allow them to compare craftsmanship. Not only that, these few peers that observe your work often feel constrained to express their true opinion or so it seems. So, it is generally difficult to objectively determine whether our work is professional or not. At best, it is possible to state that there are many more colleagues whose products are worse than ours than those whose products are better than ours. Even customer feedback can be misleading in that not all customers are capable of accurately assessing the work nor do they report results representatively. Thus, even the sense of professionalism is ultimately subjective.

The easiest basis in searching for a basis of feeling successful is creating and appreciating vectors. The unrelenting commitment to doing the best job possible and making constant improvement, whether in terms of income or skill, often leads to a feeling of being professional. In other words, while there may be those that are better than me at this point in time due to their experience, I strive for the best and am building a better future. Thus, in these fully objective and controllable goals, I am a professional, no less than my peers that are more experienced or more skillful than me.

[Brain with muscles]

This issue is not merely philosophical but instrumental for selling a service. Most customers are insufficiently familiar with a given product or service to properly evaluate it even if they had sufficient time and energy. Even more than recommendations, customers judge us as we judge ourselves. When business people project real confidence in themselves, customers pick it up, whether the communication is oral or written. Most customers can identify bluffing, rendering it is a poor long-term strategy. Instead, all entrepreneurs must understand and properly value their skills. A justifiably confident “I can do this” is the key for project approval. So, all business people must cultivate their belief in their skills to be able to apply those skills.

This belief creates the reality. Putting politics aside, millions of American believe that Trump is a successful businessman despite the fact that he has gone bankrupt 6 times because he believes that he is successful. Granted his self-confidence is a statistical outlier, his example highlights the requirement to have faith in one’s skill regardless of the current objective circumstances. To that young translator at the conference, I would say that you are a professional in that you have studied the craft, are working and striving for greater skill by having attended that translation conference. To all entrepreneurs, I would say that the persona of success is created by accentuating your true positives first to yourselves and then to others.

* Captions are important to the sight impaired. All pictures via Pixabay.