Eurovision Song Contest 2013

It's upon us again: the Eurovision Song Contest -the biggest singing competition in the world, watched by millions of people all over Europe - will be broadcast this weekend live from Malmö in Sweden. The semi-finals already in full swing, but luckily, our favourite MFL countries are automatically qualified for Saturday's Grand Final.

The event is also an opportunity to listen to some modern foreign languages: especially when it comes to France who pride themselves in entering songs in their mother tongue: Here is their candidate Amandine Bourgois with the rather haunting L'enfer et Moi (Hell and I) about how she's going to give the 'you' hell....
Nice song, though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJaab8j4fU

 

  
Spain are entering the contest with a pop-rock band with Celtic influences by the name of ESDM -short for El Sueño De Morfeo (Morpheus’ Dream). The song is called 'Contigo Hasta El Final' (With You Until the End). A lovely song, although more Irish than Spanish. Maybe not a winner, but a nice horse....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5m8aCZSvws

 

Germany have opted for a dreadful Eurodisco pseudotechno track called 'Glorious', a bad copy of the Swedish winner song from last year. And it's in English. Great Shame. Allegedly, the singer Cascada had 'many world-wide successes'....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8LPaowU9js

The other German speaking country Austria bring forward a girl with 'US American roots' singing in English. Listening to the song 'Shine' might evoke fond memories for all who had German with Frau Mahler in their primary school: Natália Kelly almost sings 'Find the Schein!'). Unfortunately, Natália didn't make it to the final. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKpqQplDVP0

Then, of course, there's the British entry. After big names like Blue and Engelbert Humperdinck it's Bonnie Tyler's turn with the decent song 'Believe in me'. In the promotion picture on the eurovision website (www.eurovision.tv) she looks like the granddaughter of the Bonnie in the back stage pics.
Do watch the video and tell me: why does she stand in the mud? Surely her fringey boots got ruined!?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqXk_FRw62Q


Well, good luck to Bonnie on the day! May she bring some points home to Great Britain!

Finally, after all these English-language songs, here is a foreign language treat - in Estonian. Birgit is singing 'Et Uus Saaks Alguse'  (A New Beginning). "Leave what's passed in the past / For things to once again start anew." Or in Estonian (with even more Umlaute than German): Mis möödund, jäägu kaugele! Et uus saaks taas alguse....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0mQfWpNG2o

Student of the Month - April 2013

Frau Mahler's Student of the Month 
for April is Georgina Rawlings in year 12 for her unwavering effort and hard work in German lessons which has led to her enormous progress since the beginning of the year. Everyone has heard that the gap between GCSE and AS-level is huge, especially in languages, but Georgina has shown that with the right attitude and dedication you can jump across and actually start enjoying the language again. 
Sehr gut gemacht und Respekt! 

We hope everyone's hard work will pay off in great exam results!
Best of luck to all of you sitting exams these days!

Year 8 trip to Madrid in April 2013

Last week, the Spanish teachers, Year 8 and some Y11 students went to the capital of Spain.

Madrid is the 3^rd largest city in the European Union (after London and Berlin). The population of the metropolitan area is around 6.5 million. It is one of the world's major global cities due to its influences in science, politics, education, entertainment, the arts, media, fashion, and culture.

From the beginning, we were excited and energized.

Here you have some pictures to see how it was!

 Madrid City Hall (it was the Post Office building in the past). Ayuntamiento, Palacio de Comunicaciones y Correos.

In the same square is the CIBELES Fountain (the of the goddess in a chariot pulled by lions), symbol of Madrid & where Real Madrid Football Club celebrates their victories.

The Instituto Cervantes, in Alcala street, is a public Institution created in Spain in 1991 to promote Spanish and co-official languages of Spain and spread the culture of Spanish speaking countries. This institution is present in 86 cities in 46 countries of 5 continents. There is 1 in London city.

You can find many resources (courses, events, activities, games, books, etc) to learn Spanish!

- Miguel de CERVANTES (Spanish novelist) wrote ‘Don Quijote’ (de la Mancha). His magnum opus is considered the 1^st modern European novel.

Some of his popular phrases: "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" (por la muestra se conoce el paño) and "who walks much and reads much, knows much and sees much" (quien anda mucho y lee mucho, sabe mucho y ve mucho).

The popular Plaza Canalejas. We were passing through here many times to go to other places.

Canalejas, Banco Hispano y BBVA

 

Show de Flamenco en el restaurante ‘Torres Bermejas’ de Madrid. Olé, Olé y Olé el arte flamenco! We were enjoying the flamenco show, even clapping to the beat of rhythm and shouting Bravo!

Pastelería del Pozo.

One of the most historical and famous bakeries in Spain. We tried some of its pastry!

La Fontana de Oro. Este lugar fue recordado por D. Benito Perez Galdos en su novela ‘La Fontana de Oro’. Madrid 1994. The Spanish writer, Benito Perez Galdos wrote about this place in his novel with the same name.

Restaurante BOTÍN en Madrid.

We visited The oldest Restaurant in the World, 1775 (S.XVIII) that is in Madrid city centre.   

It is even in the Guinness Book of Records. 

The cave to keep wine bottles inside The Botín Restaurant. Madrid has a lot of old and interesting caves, now usually converted  into wine cellars.

 Plaza de Neptuno, Paseo del PRADO & Palace Hotel. The Atlético de Madrid football team (Fernando Torres used to played in this team) celebrates their victories in this square.

Parque Europa in Torrejón de Ardoz town. Teatro Griego Odeon. El Parque Europa is the largest green leisure space in Torrejon, with 233,000 square meters. It has natural vegetation and reproductions of the most popular monuments in major European cities.

We enjoyed this big area, visited the most famous European monuments, played in the playground, enjoyed Spanish food in a nice restaurant and we were also actors for a moment!

Torre de Belem in Parque Europa

Molinos (windmills) Holandeses in Parque Europa

Torre Eiffel in Parque Europa

 Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, Real Madrid Club deFútbol. 
The club was founded in 1902. The King Alfonso XIII granted them the title ‘Real’ (Royal) in 1920. It has a lot won of national and international sport awards.

Campo de fútbol S. Bernabéu.The capacity is 85,000 people.

Museo (museum) del Real Madrid. We were watching and reading interesting information about the history of Real Madrid, its presidents, football players, winning awards, old cloths, trainers and balls, etc.

We were in the Real Madrid football players changing room!

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia from 1992. 20^th Century Art.

We enjoyed looking at paintings of some of the most famous Spanish painters like Dalí, Gris, Picasso, Miró… and specially The Guernica painting. All the students tried to paint it!

‘El Guernica’, Picasso’s most famous work, is his most powerful political statement during the Spanish Civil War. It shows the tragedies of war and the suffering of individuals and innocent civilians. It gained the status of anti-war symbol. It is blue, balck and white, 3.5 meter tall and 7.8 meters wide.

Manzanares river view from Teleférico (cable car in Madrid)

In the Teleférico cable car!

Casa de Campo. The biggest park in Madrid city centre! It was one of the students’ favorite places!

Casa de Campo

We enjoyed playing and walking through this beautiful and big park!

We went to ‘El Rastro’, it is the most popular open air flea market in Madrid. It has a great variety of (new & used) products (where you can barter) and some antique shops. We were buying some presents and practicing our Spanish!

 

At the end of our trip many students asked for more time to visit this great capital and promised to come back in future!

Hasta pronto!

Natalia Ordóñez Gómez (Spanish Language Assistant)

Fantastic work in our feeder school

Pupils in one of our primary feeders (the outstanding Ravenscote Junior School) have produced lovely work about their families and made their teacher Frau Mahler very proud.

A special mention goes to Khadeejah Hullemuth, Georgina Wickens, Kiran Sahota, Daniel Key-Nagy, Zaima Hossain, Jessica Thomas, Lara Bass, Georgina Wither who won lovely prizes, but a huge number of other year 6 kids have also produced excellent work, putting superb effort in their writing and presention and showing off their creativity and linguistic skills after not even two years of German.

Wunderbar!!

For privacy reasons, we only display work without photos, but they give you a very good idea of the amazing quality of work, for example by Tabitha Minson, Moses Olweny, Adriana Wilk and Andrew Milne.  Super Arbeit!

Year 8 Trip to Spain

Palacio de Cibeles in Madrid

On Thursday, 32 pupils in year 8 students and two year 11 students have left for Madrid to practise their their language skills  and explore the Spanish capital city. They are accompanied by Ms Metcalfe, Ms Atkinson, Mr Quintana and our foreign language assistant Natalia, who was very exited to have the opportunity to show the children around her home town! 

EuroNews - news clips in lots of languages

If you're interested in the news and would like to practice your language skills - or if you just want to listen to some Russian out of curiosity-  here is a fantastic MFL private study resource for you: The youtube channels by Euronews provide short news clips in different languages: Under 'show more' you can even read along with the transcript!

click on the word for news clips in:

French

 

Spanish

 

German

or Italian?

how about some Russian??

and English in case you want to check you understood it right...

Thank you to Madame Petros and Helen Myers for the tip!

Tomlinscote teachers running the London Marathon

Mr Daniel, our very own head of the MFL department, is going to run the London marathon this weekend in support of the children's hospice charity Shooting Star CHASE. After several months of gruelling training (and so much weight loss his clothes hardly fit anymore), Monsieur Daniel will tackle more than 26 miles this Sunday, together with Tomlinscote's Mr Regan and Ms Barnes. We are grateful to their commitment and wish them the best of luck in the race.

If you want to support them by a donation, please click on the picture and give generously!

Merci beaucoup! Vielen Dank! Muchas Gracias!

Les Choristes - Fantastic French Work

Madame Merle's Year 8s have watched the beautiful film 'Les Choristes' (the choir) and students have then produced these excellent descriptions of the plot and the main characters in very impressive language. Magnifique!

This work is by Hannah Sizmur, Katie Moys, Catherine Bell and Ella Alexander:

Here are the descriptions by Lauren Wiggins, Lynsey Savage and Lucy Morley:

Here is the poster by Patrick Lynch, Ollie Walker and Jacob Davenport

Here is the trailer of the film 'Les Choristes', which was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film in 2005:

If you got curious and would like to watch the whole film -with English subtitles - click on the picture to follow the link: