Quote:
Originally posted by Bungleau:
, It sounds like she's going for literal translation. IMHO, as someone who speaks five languages to differing degrees of skill, literal translation is not applicable to daily conversation and communication. Idea translation is. What's that? It's getting the idea across. Kids do it all the time, because they don't know the words.
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Yes, she does want literal translation. As it is a word/expression test, she wants us to learn new words from it.
The thing that sucks though, is that the teacher doesn't care whether you write the synonym or leave a blank slot - they both count as negative. In my opinion, it would be fairer if you'd get at least half the points by writing a synonym of the word. As you said, the idea gets across. Knowing the synonym for the required word would mean that you'd still manage in such a real life situation.
Another thing that sucks is that if you know too much English, you might get puzzled by thinking which word to use every now and then. Like in the first expression of the test, "To notice the enormous statue of Christ," the teacher scribbled red lines all over my writing of the word 'enormous' and wrote the word 'huge' atop of it. She apparently thought I didn't know the word, which means that I "learnt nothing new." *sigh*