West Midlands

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 all of our contacts and would like to invite students from Reception to year 10 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 10 and the winning entries from Primary and Secondary will be used as our Christmas E-cards for 2019. The two winners will also receive a £10 National Book token each.

The winning entries will also be displayed around the School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University and will feature on our website. They may also be used in publicity materials in future.  N.B. We will only 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 name, age, 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.

We hope that you will encourage your pupils to take part in this competition. The deadline for submission of entries will be Monday 2 December 2019. 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 queries 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.

Routes into Languages West Midlands invites you to Aston University’s campus for this fun and interesting French cultural event for Year 8 and 9 pupils from 12.00pm to 3.30pm on Wednesday 29 January 2020.

The afternoon will feature native French speakers who will deliver language and culture workshops on the topic of 'Carnivale' to small groups of pupils. Using the information they have learned in the workshop, pupils will then take part in a fun interactive session and present their work to the larger group at the end of the event.

Alongside the pupils' sessions, a CPD training session will be provided for teachers.

Lunch will be provided.

Please note that this year there is a cost of £10 per student for this event.

Routes into Languages West Midlands invites you to Aston University’s campus for this fun and interesting Spanish cultural event for Year 8 and 9 pupils from 12.00pm to 3.30pm on Wednesday 26 February 2020.

The afternoon will feature native Spanish speakers who will deliver language and culture workshops to small groups of pupils on the topic of  'Dia de los Muertos'. Using the information they have learned in the workshop, pupils will then take part in a fun interactive session and present their work to the larger group at the end of the event.

A CPD training session will be provided for teachers. 

Lunch will be provided.

Please note that this year there is a cost of £10 per student for this event.

Routes into Languages West Midlands invites you to Aston University’s campus for this fun and interesting German cultural event for Year 8 and 9 pupils from 12.00pm to 3.30pm on Wednesday 18 March 2020.

The afternoon will feature native German speakers who will deliver language and culture workshops on the topic of 'School in the UK and Germany' to small groups of pupils. Using the information they have learned in the workshop, pupils will then take part in a fun interactive session and present their work to the larger group at the end of the event.

A representative from the Goethe Institut will provide a CPD training session for teachers.

Lunch will be provided.

Please note that this year there is a cost of £10 per student for this event.

The Summer Holiday Language Immersion Challenge is open to Year 9 and 10 students and is designed to keep them practising their target language during the long summer break.

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 after the summer holidays, depending on how many of the challenges they have completed.

Routes will award a small prize to all of those year 9 and 10 students who complete 12 or more challenges.

The challenge booklet is available to download below.

Do you love watching the latest films? Have you ever fancied trying your hand at being a film critic? Then our latest competition for year 10 and 12 students may be for you!

We would like you to write a film review for us, but we would like it to be written in either French, German or Spanish. It doesn’t need to be long (maximum 500 words) and we would like to know the following:

• Title of the film
• Who the main characters are
• A short synopsis of the film
• What you liked about it
• What you didn’t like about it
• How many out of 10 would you give it

The competition is open to pupils in Year 10 and 12 with one winner for each year group. The winners will both receive a £25 gift voucher for themselves and £150 for their MFL department to spend on resources. A member of the Routes into Languages West Midlands team will come along to the school to present the winners with their prizes.

Each entry MUST be clearly marked on the back with the pupil’s name, age, year group, teacher and school. When sending school entries, teachers should provide a covering note with their contact details for ease of notifying winners.

All entries must be written in either French, German or Spanish.

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.

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

The closing date is 5pm on Monday 13 May 2019. Please note any entries submitted after this date will not be included and we are unable to extend the closing date for individual schools.

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

Background

The exact distribution of languages in Brussels is unknown for a number of reasons. Indeed, the linguistic census was outlawed in the early 1960s upon the request of Dutch-speaking mayors who feared that the French ‘oil slick’ would contaminate further Dutch-speaking areas around Brussels and create a corridor joining Brussels and Wallonia. In addition, the balance between Dutch and French depends on the criteria chosen: Brussels is known to be more Dutch-speaking in day time than at night due to the numbers of Flemish public servants commuting to work in Flemish governmental departments located in Brussels.  Finally, Brussels is in fact a multilingual city due on the one hand to the presence of international organisations such as the EU or NATO that promote the use of English as a lingua franca, and on the other hand to immigrant communities.

In such a context of languages in contact, the French spoken in Brussels may possess specific features resulting both from its historical developments and contemporary contacts. Yet, attempts at describing that variety have been limited, notwithstanding the now dated study by Baetens Beardsmore (1971), and a detailed description of the contemporary situation is overdue:

Quant au français pratiqué par la grande majorité des Bruxellois, il reste à décrire; tout porte à croire néanmoins qu'il manifeste une grande diversité idiolectale, sans témoigner d'une spécificité régionale particulièrement marquée — il partage de nombreux traits avec le français en Wallonie — ni d'une standardisation à l'échelle de la capitale du royaume. (Francard 1998 :16) [As for the French spoken by the vast majority of Brussels inhabitants, it is still to be described; every evidence leads to believe nonetheless that it shows significant idiolectal variety, without demonstrating any marked regional specificity – it shares many features with French in Wallonia – or a standardisation at the level of the kingdom’s capital city (our translation)]

The Project

The constitution of a corpus of authentic conversation was needed to identify what those features may be, and the Corpus of français parlé à Bruxelles, a research project led by Emmanuelle Labeau (Aston University) and Anne Dister (Université Saint Louis Bruxelles), addresses that need. Thanks to the support of the British Academy (UK), the Fonds National à la Recherche Scientifique (B), the delegation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France (F) and the Modern Humanities Research Association (UK), samples of French as spoken in Brussels have been collected, transcribed with sound alignment and put online for research and teaching.

The Event

This event, part of a wider academic conference devoted to French in Multilingual Urban Centres, celebrates the official launch of the CFPB. It provides to 6^th formers and language teachers the exciting opportunity to attend an authentic academic conference, to listen to talks (in French and English) about the language situation in Brussels and to sample a few typical Belgian products. It also introduces teachers to a valuable teaching resource to introduce language variation and the social impact of languages in their classes

Draft Programme

Registration

The event is free of charge thanks to the generous support of our sponsors: the Association for French Language Studies, Flanders House, the Modern Humanities Research Association, the Society for French Studies and WBI. However, registration is essential by Friday 7^th September.

For more information, contact Dr Emmanuelle Labeau: e.labeau@aston.ac.uk

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 £9 per student to attend.

Registration for this event will open at the beginning of October.