Warming up with speed sight translation

Next time, I will warm up the class with speed sight translation. This is not geared toward introductory courses of interpretation. It forces on focus and rapid delivery of equivalent words from A to B language or vice-versa, but it differs in "quick-response" type of training I noticed in several Japanese books on translation where the point is to go through a list of words. The point is not to do full sight translation but focus mostly on single words picked out of visible context. No time allowed to query dictionaries although they are freely allowed in the classroom.

Here we instead go through fast reading of some text immediately followed by a short burst of questions thrown to the student forced to sight translate selection of words or short expressions they just read aloud. The point is create stress, make them feel that flipping of words from one side to the other, think about alternate expressions or wordings, and perceive how muscling their competence also means stretching their capacity to bend and shake their passive knowledge of their mother tongue. Testing will start next week.

PS. I have noticed that 13 Google Readers users have this blog in their listings. Time for me to be serious.