Languages Event in Cambridge
Chloe Fisher 9B and Annabel Dunstan 9A, write:
On the 16th January, eight students from Years 8 and 9, accompanied by Mrs Elliott, attended a languages taster day at Cambridge University. The day began with a talk from one of the college staff and four ambassadors who currently study languages at the university. We discovered some surprising statistics about languages around the world, for example: only 5% of the world’s population speak English!
We took a lesson in the language that we are currently being taught at Stanborough, French or Spanish. This involved watching adverts and experiencing a lesson from the university professors, which was really enjoyable. Then we had taster sessions in two languages we had never used before – we didn’t know a single word of either of them to begin with! We had a lesson in Arabic, learning a new alphabet and discovering an interesting script. We started with basic introductions, e.g hello = ahlan, and introduced ourselves in Arabic to students from other schools. A lesson in Portuguese involved learning numbers and greetings. As you can imagine, this was slightly easier to read but pronunciation was complicated.
Overall, the day was fun and interesting and inspired us all to consider languages further in our education. We are all proud to say that we can now officially write our names in Arabic! We would like to say a huge thank you to Miss Siddiqui for organising this fantastic and stimulating event and to Mrs Elliott for accompanying us and making it very enjoyable.
“It was a very enjoyable day with a good opportunity to learn new languages!” Amy May Ashely 9A
“I enjoyed the Arabic because it was different to anything I’ve ever done before.” Ellie Anne Hart 9A
