Year 9s Isabel and Sophie make the national final of the Foreign Language Translation Bee

Two Year 9 students from St Mary’s Senior School, Isabel and Sophie have made it through to the national final of The Routes into Languages Foreign Language Translation Bee!

After competing virtually against other schools in the region by submitting videos of themselves translating simple sentence combinations into German and Spanish, St Mary’s students Sophie and Isabel, both age 13 from Colchester, were delighted to find out they have made it through to the final to compete amongst the top linguists in each of their chosen categories in this prestigious national competition.

St Mary’s Principal, Mrs Hilary Vipond said “I am thrilled to hear that Sophie and Isabel have made it through to the final of the Foreign Language Translation Bee. At St Mary’s, learning Modern Foreign Languages is a vital and integral part of our broad and balanced curriculum. Whether it is seen as stimulating intellectual challenge, a way of developing social skills or a means of deepening understanding of other cultures, language enriches the experience of every student and is a compulsory subject for all girls.”

For the final recording, the students will be practising and improving their vocabulary, spelling and memory skills, Sophie will be speaking in Spanish and Isabel in German. This project has provided a sense of progression for the girls, building on the requirements of the new KS3 curriculum, with its emphasis on translation and grammatical manipulation, helping students to practise and improve a range of skills vital to preparation for starting a GCSE course: vocabulary, pronunciation, memory, verb conjugation, tenses and sentence formation.