Babel Grammar

barclay_barrios
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Have students take a sentence from their drafts and translate it into another language using an online tool such as Babel Fish or Google’s Language Tools. Students might even choose to translate it several times (from English to French to German to Chinese); in the end, translate it back into English. The resulting sentence will be a mess. Have students use the handbook to determine where the mess happened and why (e.g., “The verb shifted in tense and number”).
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About the Author
Barclay Barrios is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Florida Atlantic University, where he teaches freshman composition and graduate courses in composition methodology and theory, rhetorics of the world wide web, and composing digital identities. He was Director of Instructional Technology at Rutgers University and currently serves on the board of Pedagogy. Barrios is a frequent presenter at professional conferences, and the author of Emerging.