Some of our Year 8s went to The International Festival of Culture at Newcastle University.  The event promotes the importance of languages both in education and the wider world.

“It was an amazing day and I learned so many new things – I can now greet people in quite a few different languages!”  Emma Watson

“We had an Italian taster session with one of the degree students, Simone, whose parents are Italian.  Some of the words were really similar to French – especially the numbers – so it was interesting to see how easy it might be to pick up a completely different language at University.  He also taught us a few things about the culture.  For example, did you know the traditional ingredients of a ‘Pizza Margherita’ are basil, mozzarella cheese and tomatoes?  These three colours represent the Italian flag!”     John McLean

“As well as the Italian, we did a crash course in Japanese. They have three different alphabets which seems weird but I suppose if you grow up learning it, it just seems natural.  They don’t have certain sounds, for example they don’t have a ‘l’ or a ‘v’ so some people’s names are pronounced totally differently in Japanese. ” Jack Simm

“Poet Matt Miller was there on the day.  He showed us how ‘free writing’, the process of just letting your pen write what it wants to, can create the most amazing ideas.  In the afternoon, we then used that inspiration to write some French and German poetry.  Mine was about the seasons – we had just been learning about weather in French so I was inspired by that.  I am really proud of what I wrote and all of our poems have been entered into the ‘Other Tongue’ poetry competition for the festival.”  Adam Williams

“I really enjoyed the day.  It made me realise how learning a language can unlock new doors and help you make friends from so many different cultures.  I will definitely be continuing with my languages when I leave Chantry.”  Alex Donaghy

Well done to all of our linguists who will also be delivering an assembly about their experiences at the Festival.  Their poems are now on the FROG French homepage.