News

London 2012 is fast approaching and UK-German Connection is running a fantastic Think German Olympics competition for schools, youth groups and FE colleges to celebrate the big event!

Find out more and enter the competition

And visit the UK-German Connection Olympics Portal for more Olympics-related information and inspiration.

University league tables for modern languages and linguistics - includes French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, south Asian, African, Australasian, modern Middle Eastern languages, literature and linguistics.

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Have you got an eTwinning story to tell?  You can share your eTwinning experiences by entering the 2012 "Your Story" competition.  Tell your story through words, photography or film and you will have the chance to win one of a host of great prizes.

More information on the competition and how to enter is available on the eTwinning website.

Schools should keep detailed records of the languages spoken by ethnic minority pupils, according to a report. Researchers from London Metropolitan University say simply to record pupils' ethnicity is too imprecise a measure as Britain becomes more diverse.

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‘El Pais’ is a bimonthly publication from the Consejería de Educación and is a selected newspaper article suitable to use in the classroom for teaching Spanish. The resource is suitable for use with Higher and Advanced Higher pupils. This resource contains a reading comprehension section and a section to use with pupils to discuss aspects of grammar and vocabulary. It also includes the answers to all the activities.

This month’s article is El alumno maduro cambia el paisaje de la Universidad and is available as a PDF from the Consejería de Educación website

To access past issues of ‘El Pais’, please visit the Consejería de Educación website.

How do you plan a foreign language lesson about a British Queen? Well, you could start with the fact that the Queen speaks French. Fluently. And she loves animals. Why not get pupils to pretend they are French journalists writing a piece on "La Reine d'Angleterre et ses Animaux". Another imaginative task which lends itself to a light or serious lesson approach is "Queen for a Day". Would you eat gateaux all day, or give your money away?

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When Victoria became queen in 1837, she was trilingual, speaking English, German and French. During her reign, she also attempted to learn many of the languages her people spoke throughout the Empire - one of them being Hindustani, which she learned from her Indian servant, Abdul Karim.

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French is another uniting factor between Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria, both of whom learned to speak the language fluently. Indeed, the menu for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee dinner was largely presented in French.  Help pupils create their own French menu fit for a queen with resources about food.

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Expat Linda A. Janssen explains why learning another language isn't just useful, but can help build a better brain.

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Register for the Blended Learning Webinar with Jamie Gutch, Head of MFL at Harrogate Grammar School, to learn about Best Practice when it comes to integrating technology in the classroom.  Session takes place on Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 3.30-4.15pm (online).

To register

Début: The Undergraduate Journal of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies is an online peer-reviewed journal for students. The latest edition is available from the Studying Languages website.

Over half of the UK’s Erasmus participants come from just twenty institutions, the British Council’s Chief Executive Martin Davidson revealed today at a reception to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Erasmus programme.

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Related item from British Council on YouTube:

• Watch interviews with people who took part in the European Lifelong Learning Programme. The programme provides opportunities for organisations, staff and learners involved in education and training across Europe to work together, learn from each others' expertise, and widen their experience of other cultures and languages.  Link to video

The Scottish Government's Languages Working Group has published their final report and recommendations for language learning in Scotland.  This Report brings forward far reaching recommendations by the Languages Working Group, with the purpose of establishing a new model for the learning and teaching of languages in Scottish schools.

Download the full report and related documents from the Scottish Government website.

Read the Scottish Government press release.

Download SCILT's response to the report.

Simon Macaulay, Chair of the Languages Working Group, discusses the outcomes of the report on the Engage for Education blog (17 May 2012)

Sarah Breslin, Director of SCILT, debates the outcomes of the report on Newsnight Scotland (17 May 2012). This item is available until Thursday 24th May 2012

Related items:

• Scottish Government Languages Working Group Key recommendations (18 May 2012 – Herald Scotland)
• Working group speaks out on languages plan (TESS, 18 May 2012)
• Scotland's pupils play language catch-up (Express, 18 May 2012)
• Should all children learn a second language from Primary 1? ('Call Kaye' BBC Radio Scotland, 17 May 2012 - available until 10:32am 24 May 2012 )
• School pupils could be taught a second language from primary one (STV News, 17 May 2012)
• Call to teach second language in Scots schools from P1 (BBC Scotland News, 17 May 2012)
• Pupils to be taught foreign language from first year of primary school (Daily Record, 17 May 2012)

Related items on languages and the economy:

• £500m 'language tax' cost to Scots economy (18 May 2012 – Herald Scotland)
• High price for decade of failings (18 May 2012 – Herald Scotland)

Related items from the UK press:

• Four year olds to start learning two foreign languages (18 May 2012 – The Telegraph)

Already a cinematic sensation, without yet being released, the Goethe Institute's film GERMAN One Word is Not Enough is the story of Hermann, the inconspicuous man who becomes the hero, German, involved in a relentless battle to prevent his adversary, Lord Vakuum, from robbing humanity of its language. GERMAN One Word is Not Enough is the only movie in which viewers can immortalize themselves – with just a few clicks.

Join Hermann on his mission to preserve language at the Goethe Institute website

Go behind the scenes with sports stars and see the important role foreign languages play in their careers. Watch Gary Lineker introduce Match of the Day in Spanish and see Jonny Wilkinson training in France. There are also a number of sports-related quizzes and games in various languages.

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Students and academics have condemned the University of Salford’s plans to shut down its Italian department, warning of damage to British graduate skills in a globalised economy.

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One of Italy's leading universities - the Politecnico di Milano - is going to switch to the English language. The university has announced that from 2014 most of its degree courses - including all its graduate courses - will be taught and assessed entirely in English rather than Italian.

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A primary school in Baillieston in Glasgow is to receive £2,000 to enable a group of teachers, parents and pupils to attend a week long experience at Skye’s Gaelic learning hub Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (SMO).  Caledonia Primary School has been nominated for the new Gaelic category in the Scottish Education Awards.

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We would like to help more young people learn more languages and are especially interested in who you listened to when making your choices. This will help us raise awareness of the benefits of language learning and the jobs available.

It should not take you more than about 5 minutes to complete the survey.

Did you know that the MP3 and the X-Ray machine were both invented in Germany? Teach your pupils all about these innovations and some lesser-known German technological highlights such 'eindrehbare Fußballstollen' (not a kind of football cake!), and see if they can answer the questions in the German inventions quiz.

Visit the German Inventions pages of the Voyage Kids website to access all the activities.

If you have a German partner school, why not tell them about the corresponding 'UK inventions' page?

Congratulations to the P6 team from St Mary’s Duntocher Primary School, West Dunbartonshire, winners of the Scottish European Educational Trust’s national Euroquiz final for the third time in the past 4 years. Team members Kieran Gallacher, Sian Hinde, Tom McAllister and Jude Molloy beat the team from Bearsden Primary School in the exciting final round. The final took place at the Scottish Parliament yesterday. Thirty teams of primary six pupils from schools from Shetland to Dumfries and Galloway arrived at the Parliament’s debating chamber with high hopes of being crowned Euroquiz 2012 winners.

For more information, please download the Euroquiz press release or visit the SEET website

Watch the final of the Euroquiz on the Scottish Parliament website 

Mallaig High School, with the backing of Highland Council, is offering is a one year Intermediate 2 course in German via Glow for senior pupils who are complete beginners. The course is on offer to interested pupils across Scotland. It will particularly benefit pupils in remote areas and those within schools where German is not currently provided.

Pupils will undertake the course working mainly on their own after a weekly face-to-face session with the teacher introducing grammar, tasks and providing feedback. The week to week programme is available on GLOW. For pupils with prior knowledge of German, provision of a Higher course could also be discussed.

This German teaching project is led by Maike Muthel, the German teacher at Mallaig High School in Lochaber. For more information please get in touch directly with Maike Muthel (MMuthel839@highlandschools.org.uk).

To get ahead, children should learn Mandarin: that's the advice from education experts who say schools need to shift their focus from European languages. Although learning any second language is beneficial to children, the one that will deliver career and salary benefits is Mandarin - and students should stick with the same language through primary and high school to have any hope of fluency.

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TECLA is a collection of teaching material for teaching Spanish to adults and young adults. It deals with socio-cultural aspects of today’s Spanish speaking world. The learning units comprise of a reading comprehension part and a language section (vocabulary, grammar, discourse). A recording of the text is also available for pronunciation and listening comprehension work.

In order to welcome and celebrate the Olympic Games in London 2012, the Consejería has developed three special TECLA teaching materials on the games:

• Level A (Basic) From Pekín to London
• Level B (Intermediate) Many more sports people
• Level C (Advanced) Some twenty years ago. Barcelona 1992

Access these resources on the Consejería de Educación website

SCILT, together with LLAS, jointly hosted a workshop showcasing some of the current research being carried out in the area of languages. The ‘Research in and for Languages’ seminar, held on 27 April 2012 at University of Strathclyde, provided a platform for both research students and staff from across the UK to tell us about the projects in which they were engaged, including language education, language in the workplace and applied linguistics.

Presentations and posters from this workshop are now available to be downloaded from the SCILT website

Je suis une célébrité - having retuned your television last month, now you can turn to the box for some MFL inspiration with LNortcliffe's I'm a Celebrity... past tense practice.

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Contributor of the week, Victoria Handford (aka MFLTeacher1), has been teaching French and German to key stages 3 and 4 for four years and is a deputy head of French. She has shared more than 150 resources on TES.

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The City of Edinburgh Council, Modern Foreign Languages Conference 2012 is being held on the 25th May 2012 at Broughton High School in Edinburgh from 10.00 – 15.00.

See our events page for further details.

Following the success of their Spanish Film Competition last year, TourSpain and the Consejería de Educación of the Spanish Embassy are inviting schools offering Spanish as a second language to participate in a similar contest in 2012. Their goal is to reward schools that excel in the teaching of our language and the best pupils of Spanish.

Prizes: A 4-day trip to A Coruña for four students, their Spanish teacher and another accompanying adult, and diplomas for all participating schools and presents for the second and third runners up

Entries: Video recordings of role-plays in Spanish based on the theme “Protecting Nature” - closing date: 25 June 2012.

For more information visit the Consejería de Educación website.

(Relates to England)

Understanding linguistic diversity among London's schoolchildren is key for the city’s future as a 'global player', research shows. A study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) mapped the distribution of languages spoken by London state school pupils. By combining language spoken with ethnicity, researchers have shed new light on patterns of educational inequality.

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The new brochure of immersion courses in France and Spain for April 2013 is now available from Le Français en Ecosse. These courses are eligible for Comenius funding. The deadline for applications is Monday 12 September 2012.

For more information, please download the brochure: Immersion Courses in France and Spain 2013

We are hosting a CPDMeet on Glow on the use of technology in the learning of Modern Foreign Languages. Catriona Oates (facilitator of MLPSNet on Glow) will host the online webconference, which starts at 4pm on 17 May 2012. It will be of interest to language educators in all sectors; primary, secondary and special education.

For more details and to sign up for the event see the Education Scotland website.

If you want to stand out from the crowd when you enter the graduate jobs market, pursuing a degree abroad could be the answer.

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With the summer term upon us and exam leave already in place, you will probably be focusing more time on junior classes this month. We would like to highlight the website called “Quiz-Busters”, as with the popular TV show Blockbusters returning soon to our screens, we thought it would be a great way for teachers to engage youngsters and incorporate some vocabulary revision in a fun and interactive way!

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As the number of applicants to modern languages degree programmes is causing some concern, the question is inevitably asked, ‘is it the cost of a four year degree programme which is discouraging applicants?’ Most of us are convinced of the immense value of the year abroad, so too are employers and students who return from to university after what many of them describe as ‘the best year of my life’.

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Mon dieu! Qu’est-ce que c’est? According to British Council Scotland, the forthcoming academic session will witness a 20 per cent increase in the number of Foreign Language Assistants. A total of 70 modern language assistants will experience the vida loca of teaching in Scottish education establishments.

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Win a place at a university summer school in Hong Kong!  There are many reasons why British students should consider Hong Kong as a destination to pursue higher education and the competition invites pupils to find out for themselves: to conduct research on this subject and then present their findings through any means, such as an essay, a video clip on youtube, a post in a blog, etc.  The best five entries will be sponsored to visit Hong Kong and study at one of the summer courses for high school students at a Hong Kong university.

The competition is open to students in S6 who are aged 18, or will be, as at 1 June 2012. The closing date for entries is 25 May 2012. 

For more information on eligibility, how to enter and the prize itself, visit the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office website.

Issue 68 of 'Education in the News' has been published and includes information on changes to foreign language teaching in France where the Minister for Education has outlined a plan for language learning from cradle to grave.

Access issue 68.

Education in the News is a Eurydice publication that brings together a range of recent education news items collected from European and international education websites, Ministry websites and other publications.

Staff at the Edinburgh branch of the upmarket fashion retailer Harvey Nichols are to receive lessons in how to conduct themselves with customers from overseas.  The department store has joined forces with Stevenson College in the capital to deliver training to employees in Russian, Chinese and Arabic culture and customs.

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Related article:

• Do's and Don'ts (Herald Scotland, 1 May 2012)

Learning a second language can boost brain power, scientists believe.  The US researchers from Northwestern University say bilingualism is a form of brain training - a mental "work out" that fine-tunes the mind.

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