St. John’s Language Week Success

Throughout last week students at St. John’s took part in Language Week- a wide range of activities and initiatives designed to inspire an interest in European languages. The week was organised by Tom Nicholls, Director of the St. John’s Specialist Colleges.

Tutor groups took part in daily quizzes, music from across Europe was played in the atrium, popular films were shown in French and Spanish, and an exhibition of “objects of the day”, ranging from a supermarket trolley to a windsurf board were on display each day, labelled in several different languages. Other activities included an inter-college petanque tournament and dance sessions, and several teaching staff dressed up as famous people from history.

The atrium of the school was adorned with flags from 24 European nations, and three giant “Word Boards” gave students the opportunity to create sentences and poetry in three languages.

During the lunch break the “Language Shop” sold pocket-money items to students, with the proviso that the transaction had to take place in French, German or Spanish. The shop only accepted Euros and many students brought in spare coins from home or exchanged sterling for Euros, again having to ask for cash in a European language.

“I enjoy learning different languages at St. John’s and it was fun to be able to try them out in the shop” said Lizzie Hunter, 12.

A range of guests were invited to St. John’s including Chris Clarke, Director of Lacoste, who met Year 10 & 11 students to discuss the critical role of languages in a global business. Other visitors included freelance translators Claire Tarring and Rachel Bond who spoke to Year 9 & 10 students.

A half-day conference was held for more than 20 bilingual students at St. John’s, many of whom speak English as a second language. Languages spoken include Hindi, Tagalog, Chinese, Italian and Welsh.

St. John’s specialist language status was awarded as a result of the school’s high standards of performance. Students at St. John’s study two or three European languages as well as Latin for their first three years and a high proportion go on to study languages at GCSE and in the Sixth Form. St. John’s also runs a popular series of evening classes for adults, covering nine languages and provides language teaching to its catchment primary schools.

Tom Nicholls was delighted that the week was such a success. “Our aim was to organise a wide range of activities to appeal to all our students. St. John’s seeks to prepare all our students to be part of the global community, and within this we aim to inspire and encourage all our students to speak other languages. Language Week proved to be a huge success and we plan to run similar events in the future”.