Language Department Update

German Exchange return visit

Our Year 10 Germanists hosted their German partners at the end of the summer term. Now they were the tour guides showing their partners an authentic experience of life in the UK. A couple of days were spent in school, learning about the English school system and a chance to compare: Whose teachers are stricter? Who gets more homework? One thing both our schools share is their central geographical position they have in their respective city centres of Munich and Cambridge.

The German visitors were given a thorough tour of central Cambridge and a lengthy walking tour of London by their teachers, determined to show them as much as possible in one day!

The high point, as always, was the group day trip, which is a packed whistle stop tour of British highlights. We went to Sandringham House and Estate, a chance to connect with the British royal family - although we have had little success in ever seeing anyone significant. The land-locked Bavarians always find the visit to the seaside at Hunstanton an absolute pleasure and they are shown every aspect of this, including eating fish and chips with salt and vinegar whilst batting off the confident seagulls.

On the way home we always stop at the Norfolk Lavender Centre, which gave our visitors and our students a chance to pick up some gifts for their families.

We say a fond farewell - or rather auf Wiedersehen - to our visitors and hope that these friendships will continue into the future. Taking part in a school exchange is a challenging route to improving one’s language skills, but far, far more is gained from this experience than just on the linguistic front. Young people getting to know each other, sharing their lives and making memories together is a wonderful thing.

Ende gut, alles gut!

Year 10 Debating in Modern Languages

During the busiest time of the summer term, amidst end of year exams, several Year 10s put themselves forward for a regional Modern Languages Debating Competition held at King’s Ely.

We had four students participate in the Spanish debates: Lydia, Scarlett, Ahmet and Alfie. Ahmet and Alfie reached the final showdown, but were pipped at the final post. All four of them had prepared themselves extremely well with strong arguments for and against the following motions:

•Los coches deberían estar prohibidos en todas las ciudades

•Escribir a mano debería ser obligatorio en los colegios

•La educación en línea es el futuro. Los colegios están obsoletos

Our two Year 10 German teams comprising Amalia, Phoebe, Eric and Lewis ended up having no-one to debate with - clearly their reputation preceded them?! Dr Walton-Jordan ran the competition in-house with the Year 10 Germanists supporting and Mr Oliver adjudicating. Yes, he’s an English teacher, however Mr Oliver is a secret linguist and happens to have a very good command of German, amongst his other languages.

He was very impressed with the high level of fluency in German of our teams.

Here are the motions for the German debates, what are your thoughts about this?

•Schulen sollten die Schuluniform abschaffen

•Handys sollten in der Schule verboten sein

•Die Ehe ist heutzutage eine altmodische Tradition

We want to congratulate all the Year 10 students who put themselves forward for the debating in a different language to their own during a busy May. Well done to you all!