Powered by Google - Using phrases to create translation exercises based on one theme

Participle constructions, gerunds, and certain infnitive construction are standard fare in the translation parts of German Abitur. How can students and teachers get practice material from the web to whet their skills? Entering "participle constructions" as you query will get you texts with the phrase participle constructions in them rather than the desired constructions as such.

And how can one quickly create custom-made exercises to fit the topic at hand, be it immigration, alternative enrgies or other?

the procerss is fairly easy. Suppose you need are teaching a unit on environmental problems and want to prepare the students for a translation paper that should contain one or more -ing-constructions. Just enter a phrase such as "with tidal power being" or "nuclear power being" or just "power being" (yes, you do use the hyphens for your search!) in Google and - hey presto! - you will have a rich amount of sentences to choose from.

Often you can directly copy the pertinent sentences from the list of hits without having to go to the document itself. Highlight the phrase, then (on a German keyboard) press Strg+C, go to a Word document on which you are preparing your collection or worksheet and use Strg+V to insert the phrase.

Here is random collection of results (participles and gerunds have been mixed) that used exactly the strategy described.

1. Wind power is one of the cheaper renewable sources, and a report foresees a huge amount of wind, wave, and tidal power being generated in Scotland.
2. While solar power provides less than 1% of all energy in the U.S., the number of kilowatts of solar power being produced has more than tripled since the early 1990s.
3. The competitive gap between solar and natural gas is even greater, with the cost of solar power being triple, or more, the cost of well-sited wind.
4. In fact, we see solar power being used every day - by plants. Plants use sunlight to generate power. This process is called photosynthesis.
5. The new house will be passive solar (south windows) and energy efficient with the possibility of solar power being added later.
6. I can think of much easier and cheaper energy sources in space (solar power being the most obvious).
7. Cutting the price in half could take solar power being a marginal technology to the industrial mainstream.
8. The media is very biased, like you hear lots of lies- such as what they say about solar power being useless, that's bullshit
9. It is nice to see solar power being a part of it as well.
10. There is no wind or solar power being sold to the Power Exchange in California.
11. "Why isn't solar power being pursued more aggressively here?"
12. The largest solar energy project ever - solar power being brought to over a 150 isolated villages in the Philippines was just announced by BP.
13. The high cost and difficulty of installing systems have been the main reasons for solar power being so slow to take off in Britain.

It is somewhat ironic that a perfect text for a translation paper of 200 words that contains an unusually large range of ing-constructions was found using a query that looked for the infinitive construction for-solar-energy-to-become.

Here it is in a slightly adapted form:

Despite leading the world in many aspects of solar power research and the industrial implementation of that research for much of the seventies and eighties, Australia has fallen behind in the race to develop practical renewable energy systems.

For those researchers working in the field of physics at the time, developing solar energy became a major area of study. Unfortunately, with the passing of the oil crisis, the need to develop alternative power sources became a relatively low political and economical priority for decision-makers around the world -- particularly in Australia.

With rises and falls in oil prices, and various international pricing policies affecting fossil fuels, the solar energy industry has taken a lot longer to get established than many people envisaged.

But with new markets developing rapidly, the sales of solar products doubling every three years and with the recent introduction of new regulations concerning climate change, solar power will surely come to the fore within the next decade.

An Australian physicist said it was imperative for government -- at all levels -- to recognise the value of the research being conducted in solar energy in Australia and to support that research and the development of local industries from it.

(Source: http://wwwcomm.murdoch.edu.au/synergy/9802/solar.html)

For infinitives look at this collection which took no longer than 10 munites to put together:

1. It is time for alternative energy to become the norm. Environmental issues, finite resources, and costs have made it possible to consider other sources of power.
2. Electric cars aren't going to work in a hundred years. And we won't have figured out how to eliminate clouds in time for solar power to help us out.
3. For solar power to be usable for the rest of us, the big gap between low-cost, inefficient cells and high-cost, efficient cells needs to be addressed.
4. The European Commission has called for solar power to be installed on half a million roofs by 2010 stimulating demand for manufacturing, leading to a market worth some 10 billion dollars, creating 100,000 new jobs.
5. In order for solar panels to be an economically viable choice for the production of electricity, production costs must go down
6. Powering the ship, which will be too far from the sun -- 1 billion miles -- for solar panels to be effective, is another challenge.
7. The system monitors the station's orientation during orbit and makes it possible for solar panels to be automatically directed towards the Sun.
8. In order for geothermal energy to be applied usefully, the heat must be conveyed by a “carrier fluid” such as water or gas.
9. Another way for geothermal energy to be provided is that magma rising through the crust will heat any nearby groundwater.
10. Discuss the conditions necessary for geothermal energy to exist.
11. Vestas expects wind power to become one of the most significant sources of energy in the world.
12. One major hurdle that remains for wind power to become a more acceptable power source is uncertainty of how a large number of wind turbines will affect the stability of the power system.
    

Cloning

1. With cloning becoming a reality that will change the way we see people and genetics being an intricate part of our survival, how do you interpret the way we live?
2. Actually with cloning becoming more common, the day will probably come that the chicken breast you buy from the store may not even have ever been attached to a living chicken. Fancy that.
3. There are several different pieces of legislation dealing with cloning being brought up this session.
4. With cloning being one of the new discoveries in today’s society, I can see how mankind could become a sea of walking machines, easily compared to those in Brave New World.
5. …then this is another example of the clone being better than the original
6. The major benefit I see cloning having is the regeneration of vital organs and body parts
7. With cloning having its first baby lamb, scientists have set their eyes on a similar success story – but this time with food products.
8. Therapeutic cloning having been fully accepted in 2018, the body part factories receive a 50% increase in demand,

Other examples:
with Hispanics being.... with Saddam Hussein being....  smoking being...  with Blair being... nuclear power being...  with the US threatening  with solar power being