Proud to be a member of the Independent Schools Modern Languages Association, our pupils recently participated in their Modern Languages writing competition. A selection of best entries successfully made it through to the national competition. 

Each pupil that entered was tasked with writing a piece in the target language, choosing from a variety of different cultural topics. The choice of topics included the beach, vegetarianism and veganism, cartoons, cultural festivals, art, and fascism. The beach proved particularly popular with the pupils, with the majority of them opting for this topic.

The creative pieces were significantly longer than what they are used to at GCSE, with the word limit for the competition being set to 250 - 350 words. It allowed the students’ skills to be tested and stretched, but also prepared them for A Level, where longer writing tasks come into play.

Year 11 pupil, Daniel, commented on the competition, ‘It’s a good way to improve your writing skills in a separate way to our GCSEs - which is mainly just exam focused. It’s a way to expand what we do in our writing that’s more useful for outside life’.

Evie, Year 11, also said that, ‘I did the competition because it will help me next year at A Level, and it’s a good thing to do in general. I chose the beach topic because it seemed nicer and more creative to write about’. 

Results

1st place and going through to the national competition: Thomasin (Year 10)

1st place for German and going through to the national competition: Roos (Year 10)
 
1st place for Spanish and going through to the national competition: Ray (Year 11)
 
There was very a high standard of entries for French, so we awarded some additional prizes:
 
Commended: Ben (Year 10) and Daniel (Year 11)
 
Highly Commended: Evie and Gracie (both Year 11)
 
Runner up: Ella (Year 10)
 
Well done to everyone that submitted entries!