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Mother Tongue Other Tongue

Posted on: July 16th 2015

Thirty students from across Years 7, 8 and 9 participated in this year’s Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition.  The competition, organised by Routes into Languages, challenges students to write either a commentary of a poem that they particularly enjoy from their Mother Tongue (if it is not English) or a poem in the language that they are learning in school (Other Tongue).

At school level it was very difficult to judge as we had lots of fantastic entries, all of which demonstrated a high level of creativity and ability. Our nine finalists were; for Mother Tongue, Yamam Ali 8G, Thavina Navaneetherasa 8G, Piotr Palma 7A and Mehek Chaudhry 9G and for Other Tongue, Emily Lin 8G, Georgia Dale 8G, Rahul Roy 8L, Smrutee Kandale 7L and Sadie Dennis 7L.

All finalists were invited to a celebration day and prize giving at Manchester Metropolitan University. Not only was this a celebration of their work but also of the vast number of languages that are spoken in Britain. In addition to seeing their poems displayed, students were able to taste food from around the world, discover the meaning of their name in Chinese, and experience Punjabi music and dance. Some students even chose to have henna tattoos!

The awards ceremony was a fantastic celebration of poetry from around the world. During the ceremony Mehek Chaudhry was announced as the North-West Champion for her entry and was awarded her prize by Amir Khan- himself a speaker of several languages. Mehek read her poem beautifully and gave a detailed explanation of her choice. It was not only a proud moment for her and her family but also for Sale Grammar School. We were definitely the loudest supporters in the lecture theatre. 

Overall it was a fantastic day and all finalists thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I am more than certain we will be there next year with even more exciting entries.

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