King’s Ely victorious at regional MFL competition for second year running

Two King’s Ely Senior students have won an award in recognition of their Spanish and debating skills.

Year 11 students Katherine Wood and Katherine Mann competed in the Spanish debate at the Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) Eastern Region Debating Competition, held at The Perse School on November the 12th.

The duo had to debate on three different GCSE and social topics, including the advantages of mobile phone technology, whether sportsmen were good role models to follow and whether learning Chinese should be made compulsory in all schools.

The girls were on top form, securing King’s Ely a win in the Spanish debate category of the competition for the second year running.

The head of MFL and Spanish at King's Ely Senior, Esmerelda Salgado, said: ‘Participants were not allowed to read from a prepared script and had to question their opponents’ arguments on the spot. Both girls were fantastic in their performance, with brilliant spontaneity and quality of language which resulted in their victory. Enhorabuena y muy bien hecho!’

The girls’ success comes just weeks after two of King’s Ely’s Year 10 students, Annie Moore and George Collier, were victorious at the VI Hispanic Theatre Festival held at North London Collegiate School. The festival, organised to celebrate Spanish language and culture in the curriculum, consisted of 14 short original Spanish plays which were performed on the night by students in Years 11–13 – and all in Spanish.

Annie and George were the youngest students to participate in the festival and they made King’s Ely proud with a brilliant performance which saw them win the prize for the ‘Best Unique Theatrical Experience’.

The MFL departments at King’s Ely are hives of activity and we thrive on developing linguistic competence in all our pupils while offering a wide range of enrichment opportunities. Strong links with our partner schools, including in France and Spain, allow us to make learning a language a rich and real experience through the use of projects on which to base students’ learning. Working collaboratively with more than a dozen different schools across Europe also resulted in King’s Ely being officially recognised as an ‘eTwinning School’ earlier this year.

To find out more about opportunities at King’s Ely, please visit www.kingsely.org.