Manchester Young Linguists Awards

Schools around the city were invited by CILT - the national centre for languages - to take part in a competition to demonstrate their language prowess. The school children who show a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ will be honoured for their language skills at the Manchester Young Linguist Awards this month.

This is the first year that CILT and Manchester City Council have come together to celebrate foreign languages being taught in primary schools. The children will receive their awards at the Goethe Institute in Manchester, next Friday 18 February.

Over 100 entries were received from key stage two pupils from across the city in several different categories: written, spoken and school prizes (the best display promoting languages in school - one for the teachers and most enthusiastic learner)The winners will get books and vouchers, while teachers will get training to improve languages in their school.

Next week's event will see over 50 children from St Catherine's Primary School, Didsbury, and Brookburn Primary School , Chorlton, who will exercise their new language skills live on stage.

Many Manchester primary schools now offer foreign languages within the curriculum and starting a second language early uses children's knack for retaining knowledge. Languages are also woven into other subjects like maths, art, science and music.

European languages like French and Spanish are currently very popular but some schools are moving further a field to Mandarin - an option that may prove very useful with growing business links in the Far East.

Councillor Sheila Newman, Executive Member for Children's Services said: "It's brilliant that we are getting children interested in languages at an early age. This gives them a good head start and speaking another language can be really exciting for young people.

"The awards are a perfect opportunity to reward the children for all their hard work and hopefully raise awareness for languages at Primary level and get even more schools involved in the future."