Translation’s a highlight!

I have started using highlighters to make translation more accessible to students (particularly those just starting the GCSE course).  The concept is easy: give the students a photocopy of the text to be translated and ask them to highlight all the words that they definitely know in the target language.  As even the most difficult text will include familiar pronouns, connectives etc, even the weakest student will soon have parts of the text highlighted.  With some groups, I get them to use a second colour to highlight words they think they can guess.  Only once they have done highlighting, may the students use dictionaries (and I limit the number of words they are allowed to look up).  So far, using this technique has enabled all my students to access the translation text at some level.

Worth a try!