Elliott School - European Day of Languages

The European Day of Languages (EDL), a Council of Europe initiative, is held annually on the 26 September to celebrate language and cultural diversity. With over 300 languages spoken in London, the capital is one of the most linguistically diverse cities in the world making the celebration of this day a great opportunity to celebrate language and culture.

The aim of this Europe-wide celebration is to provide a kick-start language learning and chance to raise awareness about the value of language skills and is celebrated in 45 countries across Europe.

Elliott School became a Language College in 1997 and since then an annual EDL festival has taken place in which students from schools from Bromley to Southfields participate. Last Friday saw the annual festival taking place in Putney with students experiencing a range of taster sessions in languages such as Mandarin, Arabic, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, German and Spanish led not only by teaching staff but also from students keen to share their linguistic knowledge and to become teachers for the day.

QUOTE from one of our Year 7 students:

“I had lots of fun. It was nice learning about different languages and to have some 6^th Formers teaching us”.

Ms Feroza Bakharia (Festival coordinator at Elliott School) said:

“The students had lots of fun and encountered lots of languages which really reflects the nature of London. You don’t have to travel to encounter a range of languages. We have them here on our doorstep and today we were able to celebrate that.”

The European Day of Languages is part of a wide programme of support provided by Elliott School to the local community to promote language learning including evening classes, primary teaching and teaching in Wandsworth Prison.