Friday Headlines
the weekly newsletter from EHS
MFL competition marks European Day of Languages
04 October 2019
To celebrate the European Day of Languages last week, the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) Department in Senior School organised the very first MFL House Competition, in which girls across different year groups and houses had an opportunity to showcase their skills in a range of languages.
All girls competed with enthusiasm and set the standard so high that the MFL staff who were judging the tasks had to make some very difficult decisions in awarding scores to each competitor.
On Monday, Year 7 performed a range of poems and songs in different languages, ranging from Italian, to Arabic, Punjabi, Mandarin, Russian and French. Every entry was outstanding, although the judges were particularly impressed with Layla and Sofia from St. Andrew’s House.
On Tuesday, Year 8 girls prepared and delivered short role-plays in pairs in French, German and Spanish. The performances varied across the different languages, but after adding all the scores, the winner in this year group was St. George.
On Wednesday, it was the turn of Year 9. The competitors had to prepare and deliver short presentations from memory about a familiar topic in French, German and Spanish. Once again, each language competition was won by a different house, but the overall winner was St. Francis.
Thursday saw Years 10 and 11 preparing and delivering short presentations, but this time using opinions, connectives and three tenses. The judges were very impressed with everyone’s effort, and for the first time in the week we had a full quota of languages, as we were able to judge entries in French, German, Spanish and Mandarin. St. George was the winner on this day.
Finally, on Friday the competition ended on a high with the staff challenge. Five enthusiastic Sixth Formers taught five ‘willing’ staff volunteers a language they did not already know. Girls had fifteen minutes to teach staff the basics of their chosen language, after which the judges listened to staff demonstrating their newly acquired language skills.
In St. George, Mr. Rees was taught by Davina how to explain the relationship between Mathematics and food in Spanish; for St. Andrew, Mr. T and Mrs Parsons learnt some basic Korean with Rose; for St. Francis, Mr Shutt demonstrated his flair for Spanish after some enthusiastic teaching by Mia; for St. Patrick, thanks to Simi’s clear guidance, Mrs Smith gave a brilliant performance in Spanish which included some skilful flamenco moves. However, it was Dr Rajp and Mila who stole the show for St. David. Mila’s outstanding teaching helped Dr Rajp to deliver a masterful performance in Bulgarian, and therefore the judges awarded St. David the top score of the day, with St George in second place.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Ellie, Lily and Isabelle, the house officials of the winning house. I would also like to thank Mrs Ajmal for her assistance in judging the different languages of the Year 7 entries. Also, my special thanks to the whole of the MFL department, whose collaboration throughout the week contributed to the event’s success.
We now look forward to organising next year’s MFL week, in which we hope to incorporate a cross-curricular approach.
Merci / danke / gracias / grazie / 謝謝
Mr A. Flox Nieva
Head of Spanish
MFL
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