Friday 21st March saw the Grand Final of the annual poetry competition held by our Modern Languages Department in our newly refurbished lecture theatre. The competition aims to introduce our young linguists to an array of poetry written in French, German and Spanish.
Each student from the Third Form to the Divisions (as well as the Lower Sixth) has the chance to study a text and then present it to their class, with the winner from each class going forward to the semi-final in each language. At this stage, teachers in that department narrow down their choices to two students in each year level, who move on to the grand final! Some of the poems presented included L’invitation au voyage (Baudelaire); Der Panther (Rainer Maria Rilke) & Caminante no hay camino (Machado).
Every year the Modern Languages staff is thrilled to see how our students choose to interpret the poems; some use only their voice to convey the meaning, whilst others this year included props and even sound effects! The competition goes to demonstrate that learning a language is more than simply gaining yet another GCSE grade. Rather, it allows access to writing which is usually sealed off from those with no experience in a language beyond their mother tongue.
A big congratulations to our winning poets!
