European Week of Languages 2020 – Multilingualism

During the week of 21st-25th September 2020 we celebrated our European Languages with a focus on Multilingualism. In tutor groups we looked at what it means to be monolingual and multilingual and found that we were perhaps much more multilingual than we thought if we take into account dialects and accents. We did a number of activities including the Stroop test and listening to Rita Ora speaking Albanian and 3 different readings of Mr Tickle with different accents.

https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Evolving-English-VoiceBank/021M-C1442X01867X-0101V0
https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Evolving-English-VoiceBank/021M-C1442X00571X-0101V0
https://sounds.bl.uk/Accents-and-dialects/Evolving-English-VoiceBank/021M-C1442X05279X-0101V0

Research shows that learning languages can have positive effects on our brains across the whole of our life.

In class we celebrated with research and creating bookmarks with the information gathered. Students in Year 7-9 in both of their languages were given a theme or topic to focus on and have produced some excellent book mark creations which you can view here.

French

The French Department has been very busy during the European Week of Languages considering various aspects of French culture and the French speaking world, to help students design and create a bookmark.

Year 7 researched attractions (buildings, sites, tourist spots) from the French speaking world. In Year 8, students researched pop artists or bands and Year 9 focused their attention on Food, Dishes and Recipes. The students were very original with their designs and created some fantastic bookmarks on those topics, earning themselves plenty of rewards and prizes.