On 14^th June, fourteen Year 8 students attended the languages Activity Day at Bridgwater and Taunton College, organised and run by the International baccalaureate students from the college during which they experienced four languages, Arabic, Polish, Africaans and Mandarin.

There were 4 activity sessions run by the college students, each very diverse and including learning about traditional foods and greetings in Polish, finding out about a recent college trip to Morocco, looking at the souvenirs brought back and designing henna hands, learnt colours and numbers in Africaans by means of fortune tellers, and played bingo in Mandarin.

In the afternoon there was an inspirational talk by guest speaker Tim Penn, a businessman who talked to us about international trade and how he runs a successful business in 16 countries across the world with his mobile phone and an imperfect knowledge of French and German.

All of the students involved found it fun and thought provoking, and these are some of the quotes from the day;

“it was really interesting and fun to learn the new languages and do activities throughout the day. I liked it when we got to listen to the talk as it inspired me to do languages as you can just do any job you want to, abroad.”

“I found the guy at the end interesting because he showed us how the world is connected with languages”

“I found out that you do not have to have perfect pronunciation and spelling to communicate with people across the world. As long as you can say what you need to say, you can communicate perfectly fine with people who have a similar interest to you.”

“It was really fun”

“It was awesome”

“I learnt so many new things!”

“I liked Africaans because it was fun and different to what these trips are usually like”

“I enjoyed designing henna patterns and writing in Arabic”

“I think it was educational and I enjoyed discovering new languages”

“I enjoyed learning new languages and getting to experience the college”

“My favourite activity was making South African chatterboxes. The words were a little hard to pronounce but it was worth it! It made me consider taking languages for GCSE because I learnt you don’t have to want to be a teacher or a translator to want to do languages”

“I found the end lecture really interesting and it opened up my view on taking a language GCSE. I really enjoyed the experience”

“Today was really interesting and it was really great having students teach us”

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