FARLINGTON’S ‘DAY OF LANGUAGES’

09 Jan 2014

On Friday, 22 November pupils at Farlington School celebrated International Education Week, a British Council initiative aimed at promoting languages worldwide, with a ‘Farlington Day of Languages’.

Mr David Walker-Smith, Head of the Faculty of Languages, and colleagues Dr Zara Iles and Mrs Anne Unsworth, who both teach English as an Additional Language to overseas students boarding at Farlington, conducted an  assembly to celebrate the languages taught or spoken in the school community.

A total of nine girls representing Cantonese, French, German, Igbo, Italian, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Swedish all greeted the school in their own language, and added  an interesting detail about themselves in that language, which showed off the huge diversity of the Farlington community. There was also a powerfully persuasive video about the many reasons why language learning is so very important for all.

In addition there were multicultural displays in the Reception Hall and a lunch-time Farlington ‘Day of Languages’ quiz, in which four teams of girls from all year groups competed fiercely using new, fun buzzers to answer a vast range of language and culturally-based quiz questions.

“The day was undoubtedly a huge success and highlighted to all our pupils exactly why learning foreign languages is so very important in the globalised world of which they are the future,” said Mr Walker-Smith. “Hearing the fascinating range of languages spoken at Farlington in one go was really impressive and I particularly enjoyed hearing Igbo for the very first time!”