Our Lingofest – the Languages Faculty House Competition – was a Speaking Competition which saw over 120 students from Years 7-9 represent their Houses in the finals of a foreign language reading competition. They read aloud songs and poems in 5 languages and were given points for pronunciation, intonation and dramatic effect. All of the finalists rose to the challenge and should be proud of their performances! The results can be seen below.

Italian

Italian Lingofest was full of impressive performances! It was hard to decide a winner for Year 7 and their poem – Sembra Questo Sembra Quello – was performed very well by all contestants, but Bella Gray (Parks) won with a great performance including an array of ingenious props! The Year 8 competition was won by Lola Colley (Nightingale) who confidently handled a poem with a tricky rhythm and lots of unusual vocabulary. In Year 9, Isabella Abraham (Windsor) read her poem with careful attention to pronunciation and pace and just edged to victory over some other strong performances! In all, lots of work went into the performances – congratulations to all participants!

German

The German Lingofest final saw pupils read a variety of texts in front of our German conversation teacher, Frau Birgitt Wilmanns. The atmosphere was buzzing as Year 7 read and brought to life the nursery rhymes ‘Backe, Backe Kuchen’ and ‘Das Farbengedicht’. There were lots of props and gesticulation to entertain and make the meaning clear. Year 8 read or sang the well-known and much enjoyed carnival song ‘Das Fliegerlied’ with appropriate sound effects. Year 9 read a poem written by another student about how the colours can make us feel. All of our finalists gave their very best and scored lots of House Points for their efforts.

French

For the second year running, the French Department decided to explore poems by the famous French author Jacques Prévert for our popular Lingofest House competition. Years 7, 8 and 9 students represented their respective House in the Final by reading either “Le Cancre”, “En sortant de l’école” or “Le chat et l’oiseau”. Our French Assistante, Mme Hunt, was so impressed with the intonation and pronunciation of our students that she found it very difficult to score each performance, which explained why the results were so close. Well done all! A special mention goes to Cara Conway-Baker in Year 8 for creating a fantastic video and recording of “En sortant de l’école”. See a few still pictures of it below.

Russian

For Lingofest, the Year 7 Russian students learnt a playground rhyme: Aty-Baty shli soldaty (Аты-Баты, шли солдаты). It has a strong, marching rhythm, repetition, questions and answers and lends itself brilliantly to clapping along. The Year 7 competitors were outstanding in team work, pronunciation, pace, fun and communicating meaning through gesture and intonation. Some competitors had also learnt the text by heart, which was most impressive.

Year 8 and 9 House teams read aloud a Russian folk-tale: ‘Repka’ (Репка, The Turnip). It is a quaint, comic, simple tale with a message: team work overcomes problems and the smallest member of the team is as important as the others. Some competitors dressed up in traditional peasant accessories, some acted out the events, others made visual aids showing the characters in the story, including an almost life-size model of the giant turnip. The performances were very entertaining!

We thank all those who took part for your efforts. Special mention goes to students who were the only person representing their House. The winners were: Parks in Year 7, Pankhurst in Year 8, and jointly Frank and Parks in Year 9. The competition was judged by Mrs Parry, the Russian Department’s native-speaker teacher.

Spanish

Visual representation of Year 7 poem ‘En un trozo de papel’

Year 8 poet: Federico García Lorca

Year 9 poet: Pablo Neruda

Spanish pupils at Key Stage 3 put on some lovely performances of a variety of poems by writers from the Spanish-speaking world. Year 7 acted out an excerpt of ‘En un trozo de papel’, a beautiful dreamlike poem by Galician poet Antonio García Teijeiro. Year 8 produced some thoughtfully performed and well-pronounced performances of ‘Mariposa’ by one of the 20th century’s most famous Spanish poets, Federico García Lorca. Meanwhile, Year 9 really entered into the spirit of Lingofest by producing a variety of renditions of ‘El viento en la isla’ by Chilean poet and Nobel Prize-winner Pablo Neruda. They brought the character of the poem alive with rhythmic chanting, dance, actions, and even sound effects to help create extra atmosphere. Well done to all who participated both in class and in the finals!