Year 8 Intensive Language Courses in Japanese and Chinese 2016

Last month a selected group of Year 8 students had the opportunity to participate in an intensive week of learning either Mandarin Chinese or Japanese language and culture.

These students participated in a wide range of activities ranging from normal classroom lessons to sports, cooking, dressing in traditional costumes and visits. It was impressive to see the students getting involved in Tai Chi, karate, and getting hands-on in the kitchen by preparing and tasting sushi and dumplings.

  

 





Traditional Chinese craft



 

 

Kimono workshop

 

 

 

Tai Ji Workshop

 

Karate session

 

 

 The Chinese students had the opportunity to pay a visit to Wellington College and take part in Tai Chi fan and calligraphy sessions organised especially for our students.

 

 

 

Wellington College's Chinese Centre

 

  

Calligraphy session at Wellington College's Chinese Centre

 

It was very rewarding to see the students using the language by the end of the week and the feedback received was extremely positive. The Language College will be opening the opportunity for those eager and linguistically talented students to embark on an early GCSE courses from September 2016.

Student of the Month - January 2015

Student of the Month is back! 

Languages teachers have each nominated an outstanding student who has shown particular effort or excellent enthusiasm in the last month! 
Well done to all these fabulous linguists!

Imaan Saeed in 7P for excellent work and contributions

Luke Oldfield in 8Y for consistent hard work and excellent class participation

Callum Stennett in 9M for very hard work and enthusiasm

Alana Scott in 9K for excellent effort in Japanese mocks

Yara Mansour in 9Q for excellent effort and improved behaviour

Rachael Grey in 10X for consistent outstanding effort and achievement

Jonathan Mann in 10H for very good effort and progress

Rebecca Hill in 10Q for consistent hard work in Chinese

Emily James in 11Q for very hard work to improve her German  

Daniel Leemans in 11R for very good effort

Marcus Dainton in 11M for good progress

Navneet Brar in 11M for consistent hard work and dedication

Japanese Intensive Courses 16th to 27th June 2014

Trying on Kimonos
Friday 20th June 2014

 

 Experimenting with Origami

Three students from King's International College

Japanese and Chinese Intensive Courses

Around 90 Year 8 students (and some Year 9s) have been working hard during their Japanese and Chinese intensive courses. For two weeks, they discarded their normal timetable in order to attend all-day sessions in their foreign language, culminating in assessments at the end. Probably more fun than the tests were the several practical workshops they attended:

The Chinese learners had wok cookery lesson and and were treated to a trip to Wellington College to experience the school's new Chinese Centre, where they watched paper cutting and Taichi fan dancing demonstrations and could join in a fan dance routine.

Fan dancing practice at Wellington College

The Japanese students could try their hands at making sushi and learned about origami, producing lovely creatures by folding paper. Aided by visitors from Japan 21, an organisation promoting Japanese language and culture, they could also find out about Kimonos and try them on themselves. 

Both groups had instruction in martial arts by visiting experts!

The Japanese teachers and the samurai experts

Derek from Wutan UK teaching the Chinese students

Luckily, everyone survived the sword fighting

Beautiful origami swans

Making sushi - Don't get fish fingers...

No, you can't take them home - but they look very fetching....

Merry Christmas (in five languages)

Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année!

Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr!

¡Feliz Navidad y Próspero Año Nuevo!

Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan!

Shinnen omedeto! Kurisumasu Omedeto!

Student of the Month

Our Student of the month for October has been nominated by Ms Yamanouchi, our Japanese teacher:
Eloise Warren in 8P has stood out
 for constantly achieving the highest grade in her class across the tests, for having full attendance and being enthusiastic in class. 

Well done!

Japanese Taster Sessions

Here is an account by Eloise Warren (Year 7) on her Japanese taster sessions:

Japanese taster sessions at Tomlinscote are really good. So far I have only had a couple of lessons and have already learnt a lot. I think that it is good that Tomlinscote have these taster sessions because it gives pupils the opportunity to gain a little knowledge of Japanese, and then later on maybe continue with the GCSE. It is fun as the Japanese culture is very different to ours and learning to write the language and learning about Japan is interesting and enjoyable. I also think that writing the language is fun because it is almost as if you are drawing what you are writing about. Even though Japanese is great fun it can be challenging to learn how to write the symbols correctly and learn all of the different types of alphabets. I think the best part of learning Japanese is being able to learn how to write the symbols because it is really knowing how to write in another language.

Thank you very much Eloise!

Have YOU had taster sessions at Tomlinscote? 

Do you want to tell the world what you think of them? Write use an email (mmahler@tomlinscote.surrey.sch.uk) or hand in a text to the MFL office.

Student of the Month - January 2012

The Tomlinscote student of the month is 

Georgina Rawlings in 11X

for her fantastic work and dedication in Japanese!

This is her second award! She is always punctual to class, her homework and classwork are both consistently perfectly completed.

Well done to you, Georgina!

Student of the Month - December 2011 (2)

Congratulations to Kelsey Parsons on her outstanding achievement in being awarded a place at  

Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to read Chinese!  

The Language College is very proud that we have two language students with places at Oxford and Cambridge for 2012! 

Kelsey is the first Tomlinscote student to have an Oxbridge place to study Chinese. Well done, Kelsey!

This month, we also celebrate a budding linguist from year 7:  

Lauren Wiggins in 7Y has written this fabulous text about her school in French:  Magnifique!

Student of the Month - November 2011

This month, we are celebrating the following students:


For Japanese, Ms Yamanouchi has declared Rianna Waren in 9Q as her student of the month for November. Well done to Rianna!


Madame Boniface, one of our MFL outreach teachers, is nominating a whole class for a special mention here: Year 6 studying French at Lakeside Primary School have done amazing work on the song 'Sur sous dans devant derriere' and have produced excellent written work about their homes and bedrooms. Also their attitude towards learning French is superb and it is a pleasure to teach them!


For Spanish, our student of the month is Halle Fowler in 9Q. She is working exceptionally hard in Spanish this year and has produced this beautiful weather forecast for Mrs Metcalfe. Very impressive work!

 

Student of the Month - October 2011

Our fantastic students of the month for October are:

For Japanese it's Georgina Rawlings from 11 X!
Well done to you! It's amazing how many of our students give up their free time to learn Japanese and Chinese early in the mornings or in the afternoons. Respect to you all!  You're all stars!!


For the French department, we have Jacob Davenport, Patrick Lynch, Lewis Reid, Ryan Taylor, Alfie Ashley  and  Scott Simpkin, all from 7Y.

The boys produced this lovely and very accurate piece of work together as part of their KS2 to KS3 transition project. We're looking forward to seeing the videos our year seven classes are currently filming about their new school! All in French and German! Watch this space!

German and Spanish to follow soon! Check the blog next week!