Assignments
Assignments-what tasks we ask students to do, how long they have to complete those tasks, how much the tasks weigh in the scope of the course-are central to the language classroom. One way to dissuade students from resorting to using MT in uncritical ways is to adjust the assignments we give them.
Reduce emphasis on time and grades
Our conversations with students about how they use machine translation underscored several reasons why they resort to these tools, including being pressed for time and grade pressure.
By reducing time and grade pressure, instructors can create pedagogical environments that are more hospitable to using all resources, including MT resources, in more thoughtful ways.
Some ways to reduce emphasis on time and grades in assignments are:
Create open-ended assignments
Implement low-stakes scaffolding (e.g., multiple drafts)
Create evaluations that do not focus solely on grammatical correctness
Shift focus from form to meaning-making
Assignments that shift the focus of language learning to meaning-making, rather than correct form, can also support a pedagogical environment that encourages thoughtful use of MT and discourages uncritical use of MT. Check out these examples:
This activity comes from another CERCLL project that explored multimodal composing and socioscientific issues in the language classroom
Debating themes from a literary text (Klekovkina & Denié-Higney, 2022)
Klekovkina and Denié-Higney refocus students on developing a coherent argument using argument maps