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TRADACTEUR ANGLAIS


caroline
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Hello

I am about to start teaching English and have limited French can anyone advise me on a good electronic dictionary or more please? My reseaech so far has thrown up a Casio EW F2000V as the best but it does many languages and I only need French English

Thank you f

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Hi!

For what purpose do you need this?

Has it got to be portable?

No program is really reliable, unless you grasp  the final language.

They can be help ( the more elaborate professional ones , so not cheap ) to give you after checking, a raw translation , which then you need to rewrite the text .

Yours,

giantpanda

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I do not think any of them are likely to be as good as a modern lap top with word to spell and grammer check first then Systrans to translate. Even then you still fall foul of context. door windows no longer comes up instead of French Windows but last week I was looking for good prices of Serre / Green Houses when low and behold a nice little number straight out of the Rocky Horror Picture show comes up. Pretty sure Serre also means hot house which is what this piece of near clothing was called. Look up Fraise and ask why I keep buying them for my router. Check out Cote with or without accent and depending on gender.  I do not see how anything without access to a larger hard disk and a powerful processor is going to do a good job. Heaved a massive sigh of relief last year when my Dentist said he had finished with the forest in my mouth realised about ten seconds later he meant drill.
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I second  Suandpete,   your students need good English and not French.   I am an English teacher (semi-retired from my local grammar school)  and have just successfully completed a full time 5 week holiday task teaching two 11 year old Russian children.

You do need good English, you certainly need to understand grammar, as that is how they are taught a foreign language at school, and also some knowledge/skills of EFL/ESOL teaching.   Without these it will not be easy.  

 Lots of books, www. sites etc.  Spend your time researching these not French.

Good luck

Tegwini

 

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Hi

I am a qualified teacher, and I have all the ESOL materials, I have some work, as an English teacher, and yes, it is quite common to speak in the lesson only in the language you are teaching. I am learning French intensively, but I have been advised that, occasionally, an advanced student may ask me if a word is -. ...... in French, for which I would use the dictionary.

However, I do have an idea of what to buy, but was really interested in using a palm top with added software or a laptop, or a separate dictionary from those who have used them before.

Thank you

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Hi Caroline

Just get a good dictionary OUP, Harrops ...  

 A lot will depend on the age and level of your student/s.  There are lots of text books with grammar exercises,  vocabulary, worksheets  and etc.    Best to spend your money on these if they are not provided for you. 

  I have no knowledge of palm tops, or specific software for a lap top, and feel they are often overrated.   Also,  internet translations are not always good - there a post on this forum showing this somewhere,  & hopefully some kind person with a good memory will find it.

Regards

Tegwini

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My OH is a bilingual, very experienced and qualified language teacher and her policy is tell students that looking up the word they want in a dictionary will make it stick better than if she just tells them.

If you do want an electronic dictionary you could consider a very lightweight mini-laptop, like the Asus Eee that I'm typing this on now. About the size of a hardback novel and much lighter than a decent Happaps. The only problem is that you may need to get the Windows version (dearer than the Linux one) to get a decent choice of translation and dictionary software.

They are available for about €250-300 and you can get them with a 3G dongle for internet anywhere there's a signal.

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Yes,   I agree with Albert's OH - looking something up, writing it down, listening/speaking a new word is the best way to remember it. Presumably most students will arrive with a suitable dictionary.

I recommend Bitesized to improve your French Caroline,  free &  and easy to use, and has clickable sound.   Good to increase one's vocabulary too. 

www.bitesizedlanguages.com

Regards

Tegwini

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My son is doing this subject at uni here and has in total five years of hard study followed possibly by another three to get a good qualification. Without fluent french first he would not have got even through his first year, so its not that easy to teach english to foreigners unless you can coverse with them as well intheir own language to help them understand better what you are trying to explain.
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[quote user="Suandpete"]It is actually perfectly possible to teach a foreign language in a country with no knowledge of that country's language [/quote]Possible, no doubt, just as it is possible to trim your lawn with a pair of nail scissors.   I suspect that it's very inefficient, though.

To take one simple example: if you speak no French, how would you answer a French beginner who asked: "How do you say in English il aurait fallu en acheter deux  or  il va falloir marcher plus vite " ?  In other words, unless you fully understand the use of falloir, how do you go about teaching the English uses of "must", "should", "need", "have to",  etc?

I'm not talking about improving the English skill of a foreign student who already has a good grasp of the language.  But if I was looking for a French teacher for English beginners, I wouldn't even consider one who didn't speak and understand English.  Not that it couldn't be done, but I don't think it could be done nearly as effectively.

It would be interesting to hear from an experienced ESL teacher in France who speaks no French.

Edited to add PS: Val_2 already made this point.  Sorry, Val_2, I missed your message.

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I believe that best of the best is Le Grand Robert & Collins électronique (gives both French-English and English-French). The software version (new edition just published needs WinXP or Vista; 2007 ed. also runs on Macs) is just over €70 (compared with just under €40 for the book). I have two copies of the book (one for upstairs and another for downstairs - it's too heavy to lug about) and am happily using an old version (2003-4) of the électronique.

The électronique has an extra advantage (apart from the obvious) over the book and that is that even if you run it on a big, heavy notebook PC it still weighs less than the book!

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I spent sixteen years teaching English as a foreign language, including a year in Italy. I never used the students' own languages and I taught students from complete beginner to advanced. How is it done? - take a TEFL training course and you will find out! As a matter of fact I am currently teaching a student in France and I do use French but I find more often than not it gets in the way. The point being that often there are no direct translations and what one is trying to do is to create an English environment where students think how to express themselves in English rather than form sentences in French and then convert them into English.

To answer the OP's original question, what you need is the Franklin Larousse electronic dictionary. This is a superb little machine that provides not only translations but also sentence examples. It will also provide you with all the verb conjugations and has a number of other features. Although I have a large Collins Robert I seldom need to use it as this little machine nearly always give me what I want. About five years ago it cost me about 60 pounds and has been worth every penny. Have a search on the internet.

Good luck with your teaching.

Patrick

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Bixy: thanks for your comment.

I remain politely sceptical, though.  If you don't speak your student's language, how do you know that he is correctly expressing in English whatever it is he wants to say?  It may be impeccable English but it may not be what he meant.

I suppose what I'm saying is that translation must be one of the skills involved in learning a language, and if the teacher doesn't speak the student's language, he can't judge the accuracy of the translation.  And I'm not talking about word-for-word translation - I'm talking about the transmission of an idea.

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Quite right Clair

There are lots of language schools in the UK, especially in the south of England.   In places like Bournemouth they limit the classes to about 15-20 students - BUT,  that could mean 20 languages !   None of the teachers are polyglots.

I know of no teacher fluent in 20 languages!    an impossible task... and major confusion and time wasted should the teacher attempt to translate for particular students. 

I have been teaching English & History for nearly 40 years, (now semi-retired) and have done TEFL/TESOL work for about 25 years as this fitted in with raising our family.  I have taught students from  France,  Italy,  Belgium,  Spain,  Russia,  Bulgaria,  Germany and a few other countries too.   I cannot speak that many languages - difficult enough learning one extra language- French!

Regards

Tegwini 

 

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I too have taught students from all over the world- and NO I do not speak all their languages. And if I'd gone to teach in China, I wouldn;t have been able to explain finer points of grammar or usage either. I feel however that it is much better if you speak the learners language for many reasons, even if you teach fully in the FL (which I've always done in my 30 years teachinbg career). It is very important for practical/safety reasons. If a child has an emergency in the classroom,  and more importantly on trips out, or abroad, accident, asthma attack etc - it could be a matter of life or death. Also although I've always taught fully in FL (I taught French/German and English)- we always had clear breaks for the teaching of finer points of grammar, especially with older students and adults. To understand and anticipate difficulties a learner will have with vocab (falso-friends for instance), or grammar (for instance how the past is expressed in English or in French, both in tense and auxiliary) or word order (eg the verb going to the end of the sentence in German, or the declension system,or the switch between verb/subject if a sentence starts with something else) - really makes your teaching more effective. That way you can understand why a particular learner has a difficulty with something, because you understand how different their language is on this point.

I have never taught students in a country where I do not understand the language - but I can well imagine that I could have done if my circumstances had been different (I had 2 young children when I decided to do a teaching degree as a mature student) - even If I had gone to Timbuctu or wherever, I am sure I would have tried hard to understand the basics for safety, and acquired a minimum to get me started. As a teacher, especially at A'Level, I've spent the last 30 years teaching students how to use a dictionary effectively. Small dictionaries and electronic equivalents are a total disaster bec., as said above by other contributors, context is not understood- and you end up with word for word goobledigook! I could understand a business person using such a tool - but not a teacher. Using a dictionary effectively is a very difficult skill- and I would always try to help a student to find out a word using a good quality dictionary (not with younger children/beginners of course) - I would also have a series of lessons dedicated to dictionary skills, ensuring that students do understand the difference betw. noun, verb, adverb, etc, and the concept of register (eg what is approrpiate in different situations- colloquial, 'normal', formal, etc. These lessons were always done in the mother tongue to ensure clarity. Having been involved in teacher training thorughout my career, and  because of my training, I am very surprised that a trained teacher would ask the question- as it should have been part of her training.

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I studied French as a foreign language at Uni here in France, we had at least 14 nationalities in my class and as has been said the teacher could not have known all of the languages involved.  The only common language was French.  Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese made up a large number of the class and lived in France for 3 years arriving with little or no French.  So the prof not speaking the languages was not a barrier to learning in fact it made sure that no one spoke in their mother tongue, none of us would have understood each other!

The problem the OP will have is that her students can all speak a common language and so they will, all the time she will not have a clue what they are saying or who it is about!

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To answer the point made by allanb. The purpose of speaking a language is communication, not precision. Students are not stupid and neither are the people listening to then. If someone says to me:" tomorrow I go England" I understand perfectly what he is trying to communicate. I once met an Italian  chap on a train who spoke to me in English without ever using a verb. We had a perfectly intelligible conversation.

I dare say a good few of us using this forum speak in sentences like the one above, and yet our French listeners understand us, and, curiously, never laugh.

Patrick

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Clair and Tegwini: I think you miss my point.  I do not say that it's impossible, only that it's inefficient.  The test is: what level of ability does the student reach, and how long does it take?

[quote user="bixy"]I dare say a good few of us using this forum speak in sentences like the one above ["tomorrow I go England"]...

[/quote]

Yes, but is that the limit of your ambition?

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