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WHAT IS GOING GLOBAL?Running since 2005, Going Global is the Modern Foreign Language Programme organised for Gifted and
Talented students across Suffolk.
Originally conceived in 2005, Going
Global set out to offer the most able Year 11
students in French, German and Spanish the
opportunity to challenge themselves further, by
enabling them to work with similar, like-minded
students in small groups, with the aim of pro-
ducing a valuable project based resource that
could potentially be used by other learners. In
an attempt to steer away from the relative con-
fines of the GCSE language courses, the stu-
dents are encouraged to investigate issues
that would not normally be covered in lessons
at school. The students were certainly not
short of imagination and creativity for their
projects, with themes as diverse as youth cul-
ture in Columbia, the influence of fashion on
health, and Germany’s role in the War on Ter-
ror. Aided by a team of tutors, working with
and advising the students to ensure they
stayed on track, the students also had a team
of Language Assistants to help the students to
say exactly what they wanted, and to enable
the participants to accurately and effectively
get their message across.
A key aspect of the project is the oppor-
tunity the students are given to develop their
ICT skills, with many students choosing to use
the latest presentation packages, or to record
themselves using audio or video software. The
end results in the past have ranged from
groups who have put together films or pod-
casts, to those who have given presentations.
One year we even had a visitor from the Cam-
eroon who came in to talk to the students
about racial discrimination in French soceity.
With such a large number of students from
schools spread right across the county, man-
aging the project between the two workshop
sessions has been crucial. To help the stu-
dents maintain contact, and to enable them to
share ideas and be creative, a website and
internet message board were set up to ensure
that from Haverhill to Holbrook and from Bec-
cles to Bury St Edmunds the students could
keep in touch with both their tutors and each
other. This was a great way of guaranteeing
that the students were properly prepared for
each of the workshops. Read on to find out
about this year’s project, the views of the stu-
dents, how you can access the resources, and
why studying languages can be really useful.
MCs Peur Le Bouc, Soufflé and Marmotte, aka
Helen Firth (Stowmarket), Rachel Turner (Kesgrave)
and Hannah Main (Hadleigh).
[1]
GOING GLOBALThe 2009 Suffolk Gifted and Talented Linguists Project
Run by Northgate High School and Language College in partnership with Suffolk County Council
Over 50 Students from 16 different
schools from across Suffolk
Cooking Up a Storm!!
When the students put to-gether a project, we normally would expect a topic based on an issue that grips the imagination. War, poverty and the environment are popular themes. So when Al-ice Laidlaw (King Edward VI) and David Weale (St Albans) decided to create their own cook book, using a selection of traditional French recipes, a few eyebrows were raised! “We had the idea of doing both a cook book and a television show, but in the end we settled on just the book.” said David. “We chose about 9 differ-ent traditional recipes. The French we used is completely dif-ferent from the language we’d use in lessons. It’s been really good!” added Alice. “We’ve been ema-ling each other and exchanging ideas, so for us the workshops have been about putting our ideas together.
Hey Sister! Go Sister!
Whilst some were going a
bit ‘Ready Steady Cook’, Wil-
liam Tink (Deben), Erica Stan-
way (Hartismere) and Bethany
Mackender (Sir John Leman)
went for a cultural angle and
produced a magazine telling
the story of Le Moulin Rouge.
Looking at the story from not
just cultural, but also historical
and linguistic aspects was a
real eye-opening experience
for the students. “We chose to
do this because we thought it
had a lot of different sides to it
- theatre, history, art and
dance.” explained Erica. “The
French we used was com-
pletely different to what we
would normally use in lessons”
said Bethany.
[2]
WORKSHOP PIX
Using ICT for creativity! Films, powerpoints, pod-casts, publishing...
All examples of how our participants have harnessed new technology to produce professional looking re-sources to put their mes-sage across to other inter-ested students and teach-ers.
On adore la cuisine
française!
How do you combine a love of football with learning a language?Tim Vickery is a
busy man. As
t h e B B C ’s
football corre-
s p o n d e n t
based in South
America, there
are, as one
would expect, a lot
of demands placed
on one’s time.
Even so, Tim took
five minutes to talk
to us about how he
got started.
“I’ve got A level
French and O level
German - it came relatively easy to me, though I
wasn’t the greatest language student. I did
German for 2 years and hated it, and my French
was probably better when I
was 16 at O level than
2 years later at A. I
can speak neither
now - I do recall a bit
of French, but it
seemed to go out the win-
dow when I started to learn Portuguese. Per-
haps the problem was that it all seemed very
abstract at the time. I was a council estate kid,
money was tight and 'abroad' was this far away
place. I remember a family holiday when I was
a kid on a campsite in Kent - on a clear night
you could see the lights from France, and that
fascinated me. Anyway, I didn’t get out of Eng-
land for the first time until I was 23 (my dad
reached 84 without ever making it further than a
quick trip to Dublin). The most important thing
about language skills is the need to communi-
cate - I didn’t have that at the time or really en-
visage ever having it - very narrow horizons. I
went to college in London and horizons started
to open, because it really internationalised me -
in one of the most cosmopolitan
places on Earth I was working
with people from all over. I
remember one of the girls I
worked with was called Lucy
Popescu. She was English, and
was amazed that I knew she was of Romanian
descent. It was easy - Romania had a player
with the same surname in the 1990 World Cup
(years later he came to Tottenham), and the
type of name is easy to identify. I could spell
Czechoslovakia when I was about 7 - a sadly
redundant skill these days, but at the time you
had to know them - they'd reached two World
Cup finals! So football gave me a conception of
the outside world as a kid - but it was when I
started travelling and also working with people
from other countries that I really began to see
the value of languages. I remember having an
Italian girlfriend - I used to love listening to her
speak Italian with her family on the phone - it
made me think there was a whole new side to
life that I still had to discover.
Anyway, in London I had a job at a theatre,
where I met lots of Brazilians, and got curious. I
knew my job there wouldn’t last long and, with
an eye on the globalisation
of football, came out to
Brazil in 1994 with
vague plans of football
journalism, and qualified
as a TEFL teacher to keep me
going in the short term.
[3]
Languages open up so many
possibilities
Tim Vickery BBC South America Football Correspondent
Tim appears on the World Football Phone-In on BBC 5 Live, every Friday night.
There’s a big world out there full of fascinating
people!
The most important thing about language skills is the need to
communicate!
Nearly 15 years later I have fluent Brazilian
Portuguese (don’t tend to write much in it, but I
did have a twice weekly column in a local paper
from 1998-2001). I do quite a bit of TV in Por-
tuguese, and exist in an all-Portuguese envi-
ronment. I've had no real success trying to get
my girlfriend or her two stepdaughters to speak
English - might have had more success with the
dog!
I can also get by in Spanish - the written
word is very close to Portuguese, so reading is
relatively easy. To my regret I don’t spend
enough time outside Brazil to really get my
Spanish up to a reasonable level - everyone
has their own method of learning, mine is in-
formal, talking and listening. The formal method
I’ve always thought, for the purposes of evalua-
tion, concentrates more on error than on com-
munication, and as a result can often inhibit.
I've never really studied Portuguese - I just
tried to have as much contact as possible with
the language. I picked up some with my
friends in London, and when I came over I read
lots of papers (always the sports pages - I
could say 'so and so is an injury doubt for Sun-
day's derby' before I could say most normal
things) and I spoke and listened as much as I
could. It's tiring - you get headaches from hav-
ing to concentrate so much - and it can be frus-
trating, because there are no short cuts and it
takes time. but it can be magic when you get
there. It opens up so many possibilities - con-
versations about football, for example, can
forge friendships between people from different
sides of the world.
The English are really funny about languages
- in most countries if you can speak other lan-
guages it's seen as a sign of intelligence. in
England it can be seen as a sign that you're
wierd. I get stick sometimes for pronouncing
names properly - Manchester City fans (often
not my fans) once discussed on an internet fo-
rum how I was trying to come across all clever
and sophisticated by pronouncing Robinho's
name correctly. It would be hard for me to say
it any other way - I've been following him since
his debut in 2002, and so have heard Brazilians
say his name millions of times.
I did some TV with the Uruguayan Gus
Poyet a couple of years ago - he said that it
was the first time that any English person had
ever pronounced his name correctly, and he
was pleased about it. But it's such a small ef-
fort to make.
The point is that there's a big wide world out
there, full of fascinating people, and unless you
can speak to someone in their own language
you can never really completely know them,
even if they speak English. An English girl out
here used to date a Brazilian guy who she really
fancied - until she learned enough Portuguese
to realise that he was a complete idiot!
[4]
[5]
THE WHO’S WHO...2009 Participants
Rozi Arnold Stradbroke Business & Enterprise College FrenchEleanor Baldwin Stowmarket High School FrenchSophie Benton Hadleigh High School French
Hannah Blackmore Farlingaye High School FrenchMegan Buncombe Leiston High School French
Katy Carroll Sir John Leman High School FrenchRachael Clark Holbrook High School FrenchSamuel Clarke Deben High School French
Helen Firth Stowmarket High School FrenchSaskia Hadley Stradbroke Business & Enterprise College French
Margaret Hollamby Bungay High School FrenchWilliam Justin King Edward VI Upper School FrenchSrilekhini Kadari St Alban’s High School French
Georgia Kerr Hadleigh High School FrenchAlice Laidler King Edward VI Upper School French
Bethany Mackender Sir John Leman High School FrenchHannah Main Hadleigh High School FrenchHolly Millard Great Cornard Upper School French
Rachel Peters Hartismere High School FrenchErica Stanway Hartismere High School French
William Tink Deben High School FrenchAndreaa Tudose Northgate High School FrenchRachel Turner Kesgrave High School French
David Weale St Alban’s High School FrenchSarah Booth Northgate High School German
Maya Booty Bungay High School German Lily Brazier Holbrook High School GermanAsa Burnett Stowmarket High School German
Natasha Goldsmith Kesgrave High School GermanSonia Gould Kesgrave High School German
Emma Heron Stowmarket High School GermanCaitlin McQueen Farlingaye High School GermanBronya Meredith Holbrook High School German
Aileen O’Keeffe Hartismere High School GermanCeara O’Keeffe Hartismere High School German
Felicity Parsons Farlingaye High School GermanTom Proctor King Edward VI Upper School GermanNaomi Rozier Thomas Mills High School German
Amy Stebbings Holbrook High School GermanAlison Tucker Thomas Mills High School German
Alexander Waples King Edward VI Upper School GermanLouise Wilby Hartismere High School GermanRoss Britcher Great Cornard Upper School Spanish
Tom Campbell-Todd King Edward VI Upper School SpanishSamantha Gammage Great Cornard Upper School Spanish
Yoji Munuo Northgate High School SpanishChristopher Neill Hadleigh High School SpanishJessica Parker Holbrook High School Spanish
Sophie Ship Holbrook High School SpanishBen Weller Northgate High School Spanish
Jenna Young King Edward VI Upper School Spanish
[6]
Creativity in the Language
Centre!
The TutorsMr A Blagona Project Coordinator
Mr D Wade French Tutor
Mrs E Powell French Tutor
Mrs F Welsh German Tutor
Mr O Stewart German Tutor
Miss E Jebb Spanish Tutor
Miss A Trouche French Assistant
Miss S Demirel German Assistant
Interested in the 2010 Project?In September 2009 we will be send-
ing letters to all Suffolk secondary schools
inviting applications for students in Year
11, who are studying French, German or
Spanish, and who are aiming at an A or A*
grade. Successful applicants will be con-
tacted and invited to take part in the
workshops, which will take place in early
2010.
Northgate High SchoolSidegate Lane West,
Ipswich,
IP4 3DL
Tel: 01473 210123
Fax: 01473 281184
www.northgate.suffolk.sch.uk
www.northgatemfl.co.uk