European Day of Languages Competition
Inspirational ideas for engaging your students!
For European Day of Languages we asked you how you inspired your students to learn languages.
We received some great ideas so read on for some brilliant thoughts about engaging students.
Trips Abroad
Competitions and Quizes
Hold school and classroom wide competitions. They get lots of people involved and taking part is almost as fun as winning! It can really change someone’s perspective on language learning and winning can help even the most reluctant students fall in love with languages.
Films and TV Programs
Music
Following on from TV and film is listening to music in the target language. Singing along in another language also really helps with pronunciation! Check out the charts in other countries or watch foreign language YouTubers!
Games and IT
Speaking Activities
These are a great way to really bring languages to life. This can be as simple as partnering up and having a conversation in your target language or utilising technology such as Skype to speak to partner classes overseas.
Let Students Teach other Students
Get Them to Bake and Eat Cakes
Cake helps everyone learn! Well, it at least puts everyone in a good mood which makes language teaching a lot easier. Plus it gets students excited for language classes and you can use it to teach culturally about the different kinds of food and celebrations in the country of your target language – croissant anyone?
Videos of Celebrities Speaking Languages
- German: Sandra Bullock, Tatiana Maslany, Diane Kruger, and Heidi Klume (though those two might be expected)
- Spanish: Gwyneth Paltrow, Zoe Saldana, Tom Hiddleston, Will Smith, and Penelope Cruz
- French: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jodie Foster, Bradley Cooper, and Tom Hiddleston (Again!)
Oh and there’s Natalie Portman who speaks all of the above (as well as Hebrew and English).
With so many fantastic ideas it was incredibly difficult to pick but our winning entry of how to engage students with language learning was…
By sharing with students a genuine passion for things that they find interesting…real music, short news articles, funny cat videos…
Who doesn’t love a good cat video?
If you have any more ideas for engaging students we’d love to hear them over on Twitter or Facebook!
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