TRAPDOOR TRANSLATION: Using Trapdoor in Textivate to make a multiple-choice translation rebuild activity

(Please scroll down to the bottom of the post to try the activity for yourself.)

This post refers to the optional text-based activity, Trapdoor, as introduced in this blog-post / user-guide:
http://textivate.posthaven.com/new-optional-text-activity-trapdoor

The end result of this blog post also requires you to include a parallel text translation in the L1 (which may or may not be divided into "chunks" by adding vertical pipes as in the example shown). See this user-guide on parallel texts and how to add them to your resource:
http://textivate.posthaven.com/parallel-texts-slash-extra-texts-along-with-a-textivate-resource

The procedure...

1. So, start by creating a short text resource and adding a parallel text.

This activity works best (and is easier for you to set up) if you chunk your text, as explained in this blog post:
http://textivate.posthaven.com/working-with-chunks
(Essentially, this involves putting each chunk on a separate line and adding ###chunked### as a new line at the top of the text.)

2. Next, click the Trapdoor button (as shown below):

You'll see your text appear in the Trapdoor text pane. 

3. Now, select each chunk, as defined by you -- if you have chunked your text into separate lines, simply select each line to make it into a Trapdoor "trap". After selecting all your traps, it should look similar to the image below:

4. Next, add the alternative translations for each trap, by clicking on the underlined text. You can add 1, 2 or 3 alternatives to each trap. The image below shows the trap options for trap 4:

5. Make sure you have checked the option "Game mode: Fixed (original text)" (which you can see in the image in 3 above). This tells textivate that only the original text is acceptable as the correct answer, as students have to select the version which matches with the translation in the parallel text.

6. Upload / Save changes to your resource, and that's it! 

The result...

You end up with a "sudden death" (i.e. students restart from the beginning if they go wrong) chunk-by-chunk translation activity, based on your own text, which should look something like this:

>>> Try the activity for yourself by clicking here <<<

:o)


BTW, and as an afterthought, you could of course do this activity the other way round, where students are reading a text in the L2 and choosing from a list of L1 chunks each time. The only downside to this is that the resource would not really be of any use for anything else, as the main text would be in the students' L1. Whereas with the version shown above, you still have all these other activities to go at...


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