A multilingual poetry competition that celebrates cultural diversity and the many languages currently spoken in schools across the UK.

The aim of the Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition is to celebrate languages, culture and language-learning, giving secondary school students the opportunity to practise and improve their foreign language skills (any language they are learning in school) and appreciate their heritage, using poetry. The regional competition is being led by Routes into Languages West Midlands at Aston University.

The idea was originally developed by the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Manchester Metropolitan University and Routes into Languages North West and due to its success, was rolled out across the country.

Routes into Languages West Midlands, with our colleagues from Aston University, will be holding a joint badged online event for year 13 and year 12 students on Wednesday 24 February from 1pm to 2.30pm.

The event is open students in year 13 students who are still undecided about whether they want to take languages at University and for those year 12 students starting to look at the idea for autumn 2022.

Please note that DBS checked staff will NOT be in attendance at this event.

To book places for your students please email Claire Richards at routes@aston.ac.uk - these are limited so early sign up is recommended to secure places.

Deadline for sign up is Wednesday 10 February at the latest. 

Please see attached draft program for your information.

Routes into Languages West Midlands, with our colleagues from Aston University, will be holding a joint badged online event for year 13 and year 12 students on Wednesday 3 March from 1pm to 2.30pm.

The event is open students in year 13 students who are still undecided about whether they want to take languages at University and for those year 12 students starting to look at the idea for autumn 2022.

Please note that DBS checked staff will NOT be in attendance at this event.

To book places for your students please email Claire Richards at routes@aston.ac.uk - these are limited so early sign up is recommended to secure places.

Deadline for sign up is Monday 25 February at the latest. 

Please see attached draft program for your information.

We are pleased to be able to offer this joint badged event with language colleagues from Aston University. The event will be held online and is FREE to attend.

This online event is aimed at year 13 students who are currently studying languages but are still unsure whether studying a language at University is the right path for them. We would also welcome any year 12 students who are particularly interested in taking languages at University in 2022.

There are a limited number of places at the event so please email routes@aston.ac.uk as soon as possible if you and your students would like to book a place.

This is a national competition open to schools in all regions in England.

Learn about Christmas traditions in different countries by taking part in our Christmas Card Design competition!

Routes into Languages West Midlands will be sending out Christmas e-cards to our contacts and would like to invite students from Reception to year 9 from schools in England to participate in our Foreign Language Christmas Card Design Competition.

We would like the students to design a card which shows the Christmas traditions of another country. Pupils should research and design their card using, if they wish, a variety of materials. 

 

Entries can be submitted in any foreign langauge – N.B. entries containing English language will not be accepted.

 

Each card should be no larger than a sheet of A4 paper and must be completed by hand, but any form of materials can be used – felt tips, paint, fabric etc. Judges will be looking for originality of illustration as well as accuracy of language and content.

 

The competition is open to pupils in Reception to year 9 and the winning entries from Primary and Secondary will be used as our Christmas E-cards for 2020. The two winners will also each receive a £20 Amazon voucher.

The winning entries may also be used on our social media and in publicity materials in future.  We will only ever use the year group and school name of the winners in any publicity, not the name of the student.

 

Each entry MUST be clearly marked on the back with the pupil’s first name, year group, teacher and school, as well as any necessary information about the language(s) chosen (i.e. if it is a less widely learned language) to facilitate judging.

 

When sending school entries, teachers should provide a covering note with their contact details for ease of notifying winners. All entries will be disposed of in our confidential waste once judging is completed.

 

Please note that entries cannot be returned, we advise making a scanned copy for pupils who wish to retain their work. In the event of insufficient entries of good quality, no prize will be awarded; the Judges’ decision is final.

The deadline for submission of entries will be Monday 7 December 2020. Please note any entries submitted after this date will not be included and we are unable to extend the closing date for individual schools.

 

Please send your entries to Claire Richards, Project Manager, Routes into Languages West Midlands, Room MB777, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET. If you have any questions, please email us at routes@aston.ac.uk or call 0121 204 4720.

 

We are very grateful for the generous funding we have received from Santander Universities which has enabled us to offer the prizes for this competition.

N.B. this competition is open to all schools in England

 

Celebrate the European Day of Languages on 26 September by taking part in our poster competition!

To mark the European Day of Languages, we invite schools from the West Midlands region to participate in our poster competition. With the number of UK languages learners reducing, whilst international commerce and travel increase, our aim is to spread the message of the importance of learning languages, promoting intercultural awareness and encourage uptake for all students.

Speaking another language can lead to new friendships, more fun when on holiday and opportunities to study or work abroad in the future. So, to get our Reception to Year 10 pupils thinking about these things, we would like the students to design a poster about another European country they would like to visit. Pupils should design their own poster, using, if they wish, a variety of materials and languages! (Reception and KS1 students may recieve some help from their teachers/parents of course!)

The poster should tell us which country it is and some facts about it e.g. language spoken, food, music, famous landmarks etc. – the more the better!

Entries can be submitted in any foreign language or languages and may include some English if desired (for example, pupils may like to provide a translation of the facts they provide). Each poster should be no larger than a sheet of A4 paper and must be completed by hand but any form of materials can be used – felt tips, paint, fabric etc. Judges will be looking for originality of illustration as well as accuracy of language and content.

The competition is open to pupils in Reception to Year 10 with one winner for each key stage. Each entry MUST be accompanied by a cover sheet which is attached to the bottom of this page. Entries without a cover sheet will not be counted. N.B. cover sheet will not ask for any personal details which may identify the child, just a first name, year group and school. All entries and cover sheets will be deleted after the judging has been completed, with the exception of the winning entries, which will be posted on our social media. At this point only the school and the year group will be shown.   

N.B. All entries should be scanned and emailed to routes@aston.ac.uk as due to COVID-19 restrictions we will not be back in the Routes office by September and therefore all judging will need to be done via a TEAMS meeting.

In the event of insufficient entries of good quality, no prize will be awarded; the judges’ decision is final.

1 prize each will be awarded for the best primary and best secondary entry. The prizes will be a £20 Amazon E-voucher for each of the winners plus a winner’s certificate. Prizes and certificates will be emailed to the contact at the school who submitted the entries on behalf of the students. 

We hope that you will encourage your pupils to take part in this competition as part of your in-school European Day of Languages celebrations. 

The deadline for submission of entries will be Monday 12 October 2020.  Please note any entries submitted after this date will not be included and we are unable to extend the closing date for individual schools.

If you have any queries please email us at routes@aston.ac.uk

We are very grateful for the generous funding we have received from Santander Universities which has enabled us to offer the prizes for this competition.

 

Welcome!

 

Welcome and thank you very much for visiting our virtual Languages in Higher Education Sixth Form Conference page.

Unfortunately due to the current situation with COVID-19 we are unable to invite you on to campus as we have done in previous years. However, we hope you enjoy your time watching the presentations and lectures on this page and that they provide you with lots of information and inspire you to continue learning languages.

We would like to say a big thank you to the following people for taking the time out of their very busy schedules to put together and record their presentations and lectures, without which, we wouldn't be able to produce this Conference for you: Nicola Davies, Head of Languages, Diplomatic Academy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, our languages colleagues from Aston University, Emmanuelle, Stefanie and Elena and our Routes into Languages ambassador Patrycja.

Viewing the Lectures and Presentations

 

The lectures and presentations are all available for you to view  through Panopto. This software will allow you to view the lectures and presentations in different windows depending on whether you would rather see the tutor in the main picture, or prefer to see the presentation slides in the larger screen. It is up to you and you can change this to suit your own preferences. You will just need to click on the arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the  video screen to allow you to do this.

 

Why Study Languages in Higher Education?

 

In the following video, our Regional Director, Dr Raquel Fernández Sánchez explains the benefits and opportunities of studying languages at University, the routes you can take to do this and the possible job opportunities it could lead to.

 

 

 

 

Languages at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

 

Nicola Davies, Head of Languages for the Diplomatic Academy at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, talks about her own langauges journey and the role of languages  within the Foreign and Commonwealth office.

 

 

 

 

 

A Student’s Point of View

 

Patrycja is a final year student at Aston University studying International Business with German and Chinese and she is also one of our Routes into Languages ambassadors. In this video, she talks about her own languages journey from the time when she started learning languages as a very small child to studying at University, including time spent in Germany and China during her placement year abroad.

 

 

Lectures

 

French – Honi Soit qui mal y pense

In her lecture, Dr Emmanuelle Labeau, Head of French at Aston University, talks about linguistic relations between Britain and France.

 

 

 

German – Deutschland vor, während und nach der Wiedervereinigung

Dr Stefanie Kreibich, Teaching Associate in German at Aston University talks about Germany before, during and after Re-unification.

 

 

 

Spanish – Regional Differences in Spain

In her lecture Elena Cancelas-Rodríguez, Spanish Teaching Associate at Aston University, talks about the regional differences in Spain focusing particularly on the region of Galicia.

 

 

 

Questions and Feedback

 

Thank you very much for taking part in our virtual Languages in Higher Education Sixth Form Conference. We hope you enjoyed the presentations and lectures and that they inspired you to carry on with your languages journey.

If you have any questions please contact us and we will be very happy to help.

If you would like to get in touch with Nicola Davies, please just let us know using on of the contact methods below and we can arrange this for you.

Finally, we would really welcome your feedback on the conference as we may need to run it this way in future years. You can contact us in the following ways:

Email: routes@aston.ac.uk 

Facebook: RoutesWestMids

Twitter: RoutesWestMids

Many thanks

The Routes West Midlands Team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The  Language Immersion Challenge is open to all Year 7  to Year 10 students in England and is designed to keep them practising their target language whilst they are not able to attend school at the current time.

Students each receive a booklet containing 14 activities for them to complete, ranging from sending an email, watching a film or reading a teenagers blog in the target language to name just a few.

Participants will be awarded Gold, Silver or Bronze certificates in September depending on how many of the challenges they have completed (subject to students being back in school by September).

The challenge booklet is available to download below.

The Year 9 Language Day at the University of Wolverhampton aims to raise aspirations and encourage pupils from schools in the West Midlands to study languages. The day features inspirational talks from local business executives and a marketing activity related directly to language learning and its relevance in business. This event has always been well received and well attended.

Please note that there is a cost of £10 per student to attend.

This event is now fully booked.

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF DEADLINE FOR THIS COMPETITION. THIS HAS NOW BEEN EXTENDED TO THE END OF THE SUMMER TERM ON TUESDAY 21 JULY 2020.

 

A multilingual poetry competition that celebrates cultural diversity and the many languages currently spoken in schools across the UK.

The aim of the Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition is to celebrate languages, culture and language-learning, giving secondary school students the opportunity to practise and improve their foreign language skills (any language they are learning in school) and appreciate their heritage, using poetry. The regional competition is being led by Routes into Languages West Midlands at Aston University, Birmingham and we are delighted this year to open it up to all students from all primary and secondary schools in the West Midlands region.

The idea was originally developed by the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Manchester Metropolitan University and Routes into Languages North West and due to its success, is now being rolled out across the country.

Programme: 

The competition

Mother Tongue entries will be in two parts: The first part is the poem. This can be an original, creative piece, or a poem or song that is ‘remembered’ – i.e. something in your first language that you recall, or that has been told to you by a relative. This can be in any language but English. The second part should be a short explanation of the inspiration behind the piece, where it comes from, or why it is important to the person submitting it (no more than half a page). This part must be written in English and is the part your entry will be judged on.

Other Tongue entries must be an original poem written in a language that is not the first language spoken by the person writing it. Entries are welcomed in French, Spanish, German or Italian.

Winning students from the West Midlands will be invited to the National Celebration Event at Manchester Metropolitan University in June date to be confirmed.

How to enter

The competition opens on Monday 2 March and the deadline for entries is Friday 29 May 2020. 

Please send your entries by email to routes@aston.ac.uk,

The competition is open to all students in Reception, KS1, KS2,KS3, KS4 & KS5.

See www.mtot.org.uk  for further details and to download promotional materials, workshop ideas and resources