Beowulf As A Translation For The English Language Learners

In order for English Language Learners to effectively ascertain the language, it is important that those students are exposed to linguistic input they can understand. In a text such as Beowulf, it is mandatory that a simplified version of the text is provided to English learners because of the already complex nature of the original text. Beowulf in its aboriginal form, Old English, is too far removed from the Modern English Language spoken today. Not only must we provide a translation for English Language Learners, we must first have provided a translation to our general education students as well, but, there should be differentiation in the translations for the two separate groups. For the general education learners, I suggest an elaboration …show more content…
While making changes to the text I implemented specific strategies suggested by the report. Those strategies include: distinguishing academic language from everyday vocabulary, contextualizing vocabulary instruction, and contextualizing through familiarity with genre and structure.
When identifying the main ideas and key words I prepared the text for the students by underlining, or highlighting the items. Another option that can be used is, providing a separate list to be used as a point of reference. For consistency, the structure of the passage that has been adapted should be clear and consistent, this was accomplished by beginning each paragraph, or section of the text, with a concise topic sentence. To follow up with the consistency aspect, several supporting sentences are provided for more detail, this can provide important clarity for the English Language Learner. As far as shorten sentences, whenever possible, complex sentences were shortened into two or more shorter and less complex sentences. Unnecessary clauses or words were also removed, but, the original sentence did not lose its …show more content…
I provided a simplified text which reduced the complexity of syntax, as well as vocabulary, in the poem from its original version. The modified text simply focuses on the key points and is comprised of shorter passages. Furthermore, the vocabulary is condensed so that uncommon, or less used, words that students may not be exposed to in the daily use of language are either removed, which can be done effectively as long as the passage does not lose its meaning, or substituted for more common words. For example, the first sentence in the text from Beowulf has been changed, the following is the original