Modern Foreign Languages

Mandarin event savoured by Perse pupils

Year 10 Mandarin students met children from Wenzhou No 2 Foreign Language School, based in China’s east coast Zhejiang province, via an online link.

Besides practising each other’s languages, they shared experiences of their interests and school life as well as their cultures from food to festivals.

Perse Head of Mandarin Hannah Bolton said: “One of the things they all loved was playing video games. They bonded over Minecraft, so they were very excited about that!”

The Wenzhou pupils rounded off the interactive session by performing a traditional Chinese song and dance called Mo Li Hua, which translates as Jasmine Flower.

Ariana came third overall, while Jo went as far as the semi-final.

To reach the national finals, both students first had to qualify at the regional stage, attempting to learn an increasing number of words in Spanish and/or French as they progressed. Both students thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the competition, which sees contestants given a word in English that they must translate into the relevant language before saying the spelling out loud.

Jo said: “I found it quite hard at first because none of my family are Spanish but after the first two rounds, I became quite obsessive! It’s just really good fun.

“I really like languages because it’s very satisfying to know you can speak to other people around the world if you go on holiday or learn about different cultures.”

Meanwhile, Ariana said the experience so far had helped improve her grasp of the language.

She said: “It’s helped me a lot with my vocabulary in general and pronunciation, especially because we’ve learned words that we don’t learn in the normal curriculum.

“I talk a little bit with my mum at home, but it’s useful when she’s talking to my grandmother in Peru and I can understand a bit better what they’re saying.”

Both Jo and Ariana said the MFL Spelling Bee Club, led by French teacher Hannah Roberts, had been a big help in preparing them for each round of the competition.

He collected silver in the individual competition having attempted to solve problems focusing on the structures of obscure languages, such as the Native American Alabama, the Australian aboriginal Arabana and the extinct Ubykh, during a six-hour test.

Toby also helped the UK team to bronze in the team event as they tackled a five-hour exam involving a series of tough questions based on the little-used Manchu language of northeast China.

It was the second consecutive year that Toby had taken part in the IOL, having claimed individual bronze in the 2021 edition, which was held online due to the Covid pandemic.

Toby gained selection for the eight-strong national squad once more after impressing in a training camp at the University of Warwick, having performed exceptionally well in the first two online rounds of the UK Linguistics Olympiad (UKLO).

He was elated to have done so well in both the individual and team competitions and thoroughly enjoyed being able to take part in the IOL in person. Toby said: “It was a fantastic experience, meeting many like-minded students from all around the world and getting exposure to a range of different cultures.

“The most interesting problem of this year’s contest was about how the pronunciation of words changes with time, while the hardest problem involved decomposing the meaning and structure of verbs. Many questions require you to think outside the box.

“Aside from the competition, there were many social opportunities and cultural excursions, including a Manx concert and an evening of Celtic dance.

“The Linguistics Olympiad was a fantastic opportunity to make friends with people from all over the globe, with more than 150 students attending from over 30 different countries. The whole event was amazing and I learned so much from the training and competition.”

Overall, Perse students won 15 awards in the UKLO – three Gold, two Silver and 11 Bronze. Gold awards were won by Toby Collins, as well as Jem Bennett and Kiran Diamond (both Lower Sixth).

Organised by The Queen’s College, Oxford, the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators is inspired by the late renowned literary translator and aims to encourage youngsters to go further with modern foreign languages.

More than 3,200 pupils across the country entered the competition and Natalie was the national runner-up and East region Level 3 champion in both Spanish and Mandarin, having had the challenges of translating part of a story from those languages to English.

She said: “You could choose from a piece of fiction, nonfiction or poetry and I picked the fiction for both language categories. You were allowed to use an online translation tool, such as Google Translate, to help and they also gave some of the possible translations for words, so you could choose which ones you thought made it sound the best. “It was trying to figure out what would be the natural way for the piece to read in English translation because if you literally translate from Spanish, it sounds strange. With Mandarin, it was more about trying to convey the feeling and get the overall sense of characters.

“I was very surprised to have won, especially in both languages, because a lot of people entered, but I really enjoyed doing it.”

They teamed up to enter the Japanese Video Championship for Young Learners (JaViChamp) after hearing about the competition from languages teacher Sibylle Wilson during Perse Japanese Club sessions.

Organised by The Japan Foundation London, the competition challenged participants to make a short video on the theme of ‘Our Favourite Place in School’.

The pair chose to focus on the Perse sports facilities and produced a fun film explaining their passion for PE, taking in vaults in the sports studio, hockey on the all-weather pitches and shooting in the rifle range.

Hanli said: “Maito and I both love the multitude of sporting facilities available and getting to speak Japanese while using them made them even better. We were very pleased to find out that we have been chosen as one of the finalists.”

They earned Gold and Credit awards respectively in the online competition, helping The Perse take first place in the global small entry category for Japanese, as well as being the highest-ranked British school in the language, based on average scores.

Thomas and Eos, along with fellow JLPT (Japanese-Language Proficiency Test) students Will Bacon, Lily MacFarlane (both Upper Sixth) and Benjamin Sharpstone (Lower Sixth), took part after being encouraged to enter by Japanese teacher Mary Grace Browning.

They participated in a range of activities and exercises, testing a wide variety of their linguistic skills, while being able to see how they were performing individually in real time. Thomas focused on converting Japanese to English, largely through reading and listening activities, while Eos concentrated on being tested on new vocabulary.

Pupils translated as many sentences as they could into French, with one pupil also translating content into Spanish as well.

Although the regional final was held online, this did not deter students from giving their best efforts to the competition as they translated up to 11 sentences in a minute. French and German teacher Helen Carmell said: “The pupils chose to participate as they were all very interested in languages and wanted to expand their knowledge. They all very much enjoyed working with each other and felt the competition had helped them with classwork too. I would like to say a huge thank you to Alice Shaw, Rebecca Alexander and Kiana Mackie for their fantastic efforts and enthusiasm and I look forward to working with them and other linguisticminded pupils on future language competitions.”

Gold (French) Octavian Marinas Gold (French) Jonathan Hamilton Gold (Spanish) Sid Suresh Gold (Spanish) Ariel Fishgang

Silver (German) Sophia Georgiadis

Silver (German) Nicola McGilly

Bronze (German) Carole Tucker

Bronze (German) Anshuman Gunda

Silver (French) Diya Seth

Silver (French) Emily Fowkes Bolt

Gold (German) Freddie Shrager and Aiko McEwan

Regional finalist (French) – Fraya Sudeep (Year 7)

“Ever since joining the school, Spanish has grown to be one of my favourite subjects and so by taking part in this club, I hoped to gain a greater insight into other aspects of the language and culture that aren’t covered as much in the GCSE course. Since I am also planning on taking Spanish A level next year this seemed like the perfect opportunity to develop some of the skills needed for the course. We watched a film called The Motorcycle Diaries which is a biopic about the guerrilla leader Ernesto Guevara. Whilst watching the film we regularly discussed our thoughts about it - something which I enjoyed as it helped to further my understanding of the film and also improved my speaking.”

“Participating in the MFL debating competition was a lot of fun. I got to practise my German speaking skills and quick thinking when it came to rebuttals. Being there in person was quite nerve racking, but being prepared with some flash cards helped a lot. I would recommend the experience if you want to further your language skills. I learned about thinking quickly in a language that I am less familiar with.

The themes for the debates tied in with the themes found in the GCSE syllabus, which meant that participating gave me some practice in talking about those key topics.”

“I decided to participate in this club as it is a fun learning opportunity and embraces many cultures through film. This club has helped my learning and consolidation of the languages I have taken this year. We have watched a film in French (La Vie en Rose), one in German (Ballon) and one in Spanish (Voces Inocentes). I find this club interesting as it is a relaxed yet educational environment to help me consolidate and learn languages.”