Holly Whalin |
Word Wizard is a competition hosted by SCILT – Scotland’s National Centre for Languages. The organisation has put together this competition in partnership with The University of St. Andrews and UCML. The languages involved were French, Spanish, German, Gaelic and Mandarin. The competition is held so that the children selected can expand their vocabulary, enjoy learning and have fun, test their memory and finally represent their schools at national levels. The head teacher of our school Mrs. Mullen, and Mr. Burns – a modern languages teacher – introduced the Word Wizard competition to St. Andrews and St. Brides as their old school, where they used to work, were involved last year and won the full competition.
The modern languages teachers put forward students from their classes who they believed had the potential to work well throughout this competition. The way it worked in school was simply judged through heats as the school could only take through one intermediate French pupil, two intermediate Spanish pupils, two beginners French pupils and two beginners Spanish pupils. The heats took place in the school and each pupil was given the first 75 words to learn off by heart. They had two minutes to spell out, in their language, the randomized words and whoever got the most was through to the semi-finals which were held in the modern languages department of Strathclyde University.
Both the pupils and the teachers involved enjoyed the time spent preparing and taking part in the competition. Mr Burns, teacher of modern languages, said that ‘it was a good opportunity for pupils to improve their literacy skills, French and Spanish vocabulary and get into the spirit of the competition.’
Alessandro Colquhoun – a Spanish pupil involved in the competition – agreed saying that ‘my Spanish has improved and my vocabulary has definitely expanded throughout this competition.’
All students involved in the competition enjoyed themselves as did I; it was a great experience for us all.
