North West

EXTERNAL COMPETITION

To celebrate Portugal's National Day the Consulate General of Portugal in Manchester are organising a poster competition.

The competition is open to 5 to 12 year olds living in the North of England and invites them to create a poster about:

• My holidays in Portugal
• A TAP airplane at Manchester airport
• The city of Lisbon
• The city of Manchester

Posters must be A3 size, clearly labelled with the name and age of the artist, as well as the full address and telephone number of a responsible adult.

Posters should be sent to:

Concurso de desenho/pintura, Consulado General de Portugal em Manchester, 1 Portland Street, Manchester, M2 3BE.

The deadline for entries is Friday 3rd June 2011. The winning poster will be exhibited at the Portuguese Consulate General in Manchester on Portugal's National Day - 10th June.

The event is sponsored by TAP Portugal and the winner will receive a plane ticket from Manchester to Lisbon.

The Routes North West Project Manager will be delivering a 'Why Study Languages?' talk and presenting an award at UCLan's Lancashire's Talent Awards ceremony.

The competition, organised in conjunction with Lancashire County Council, has involved year 8 pupils writing songs or poems in a foreign language.

This Awards ceremony will see the winning pupils collecting their prizes.

The School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester is proud to present its annual Palaver Festival at the Contact Theatre at the end of March. The festival celebrates language and performance and includes a diverse selection of performances from a number of Schools and Societies from The University of Manchester.

We are pleased to present three foreign language plays this year, put on by our Middle Eastern, French and German Studies students. All performances are held at the Contact Theatre, Oxford Road, Manchester:

Monday 21 March 8pm: The Stalker by Ruti Worrall (in Hebrew, Arabic and English)

Tuesday 22 March to Wednesday 23 March 8pm: Edgard Et Sa Bonne by Eugène Labiche (in French)

Wednesday 23 March to Saturday 26 March 7:30pm: King Kongs Töchter by Theresia Walser

There is also an exciting programme of music and performance throughout the festival week.

For further information and for bookings, please visit the Contact Theatre website.

Palaver is sponsored by the Goethe Institute
 

World Languages and the EBacc: the importance of supporting languages in the 21st Century school curriculum

A free workshop for:
• Secondary Leaders and Curriculum Planners
• Language teachers in Secondary Schools
• Community Language teachers in Supplementary Schools

This is an opportunity for teachers, leaders and planners to reflect on the current situation in education and on the changes that might affect schools directly, as well as to give a considered and reflective approach to forward planning and evaluation. The day will be led by colleagues from Routes into Languages and Links into Languages.

This year, we are holding an Arabic and Urdu A-Level Day, which is aimed at AS or A2 students studying Arabic or Urdu.

This event will have a practical focus and aims to support AS and A2 students in their preparation for the A-Level examinations. It will include:
• A talk about languages in Higher Education and career opportunities with languages;
• A revision session in the language studied and a taster in another lesser-taught language;
• An examiner’s talk, in which an experienced A-Level examiner will talk about exam techniques and share tips for success.

A-Level students will also have the opportunity to talk to university language students over lunch and find out more about life at university.
 

Winners of the school-wide Spelling Bee competitions will join us for the Regional Spelling Bee Final.

The competition will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University and will see the region's top spellers in foreign language battling out for a place in the National Final, which will be held in Cambridge in July 2011.

Winners will be presented with trophies, with certificates for the runners up.

The Bangladesh Students’ Society (BSS) at the University of Manchester are observing International Mother Languages Day and Martyr’s Day of Bangladesh

Date: 21st February 2011

Time: 4 pm

Venue: Club Academy at the University of Manchester Student’s Union (UMSU).

The key part of the observation is the discussion program which will be followed by a small cultural program and a debate competition.

Jocelyn Wyburd, Executive Director of the Manchester University Language Centre and partner of Routes into Languages will speak about the importance of Mother Tongue languages and the work that Routes into Languages North West are doing to support heritage languages across the region.

Samuel Harris from the International Society of the University will be present among the speakers.

For further details of the IMLD event please contact: bss@umsu.manchester.ac.uk & RSVP through this Facebook link. 

Celebrate with us as we mark the beginning of the Year of the Rabbit.

To celebrate Chinese New Year Routes North West are working in conjunction with Manchester Art Gallery.

On Sunday 6th February, from 11am to 4pm there will be a range of activities taking place at the gallery to mark Chinese New Year.

To find out more, please visit the Manchester Art Gallery website.

Mandarin GCSE Study Session

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL HAVE A NEW DATE. CHECK THIS WEBSITE FOR MORE DETAILS.

Recommended for GCSE and equivalent level Mandarin

£5 per student, 158 places

Screening: Springtime in a Small Town  (Xiao Cheng Zhi Chun) PG

Director: Tian Zhuangzhuang, China, 2003, 116 mins.

In Mandarin with English subtitles

Springtime in a Small Town is a romantic take of unfulfilled love set at the end of China's war against Japan. Dr. Zhang Zhichen (Xin Baiqing) returns to his hometown to visit an old family friend, Dai Liyan (Wu Ju), who is unwell and is now married to the doctor's childhood sweetheart. Tension rises as the former sweethearts rediscover their feelings for each other.

Led by Dr. Qi Zhang, Chinese Lector, Manchester Metropolitan University and Robert Hamilton, Senior Lecturer Film and Media studies, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Learn how to publish and share your teaching resources on the internet!

This free workshop is designed specifically for teachers of community languages and is part of the Community Café project, led by the Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies and supported by Routes North West.

The objectives of the workshop are to:

• learn how to use an innovative resource-sharing site called LanguageBox
• learn how to publish your teaching resources online for students and other teachers to use
• consider some of the issues around publishing your teaching online and discover where to find free resources
• join a group of community language teachers sharing their resources online
• share ideas and teaching materials with other teachers of your language across the UK

Join us and become part of a project which is connecting community languages teachers across the UK, and part of a community which is creating a pool of resources and information for language teachers to use in their everyday work.

The workshop is free to attend and refreshments will be provided.

If you wish to find out more about the project, please read about our café meetings and workshop sessions on our blog