European day of languages

A fantastic assembly took place this morning to launch our day of celebrations for European Day of Languages, and it was an amazing showcase not only of the power of language to unite, but of our multilingual school community: 305 of our students speak a second language, with 48 different languages spoken at school!

A group of our Year 7 students brilliantly led a section in which we were invited to guess the language that they were speaking, and the languages spoken were: Urdu, Mandarin, Arabic, Telugu, Yoruba, Marathi, Tamil and Japanese.

Our Year 12 Swiss exchange students Deniz, Lina, Vanessa & Lionel delivered a valuable insight into the languages of Switzerland and how their spoken English and cultural experience has developed while on exchange. Though they did observe that they struggled slightly to understand strong Mancunian accents!

Mr Bridge and Mrs Chadwick celebrated the importance of language learning to life, learning, progression, enrichment and society, while profiling the many language extracurricular opportunities available to our students to participate in and forthcoming events and competitions, such as the Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators, in which, as a school, we have enjoyed great success over the years.

As Mr Bridge concluded, citing Psycholinguist Frank Smith: "One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way" and we know that our students left inspired to develop and enrich their language learning.

We're incredibly proud of all of the students who took part today. Well done!