Freemen's hosts 12th Love Languages competition

Freemen’s Modern Languages team hosted the 12^th Love Languages competition last week.

This highly successful languages competition has now been running since 2011. 

Open to all students in Years 5 to 8, the theme this year was “Famous Personalities” and performances were judged by Mr Jim Davis and Mrs Anne Boyd. 

Performances were judged on three criteria; quality of language, creativity and originality and quality of performance. 

Freemen’s School competed against pupils from St David’s School, Purley; St Catherine’s School, Bramley; Ashford Prep School and Parkgate House School, London.

After all the performances Ashford Prep School was unveiled as the winners at a prize giving ceremony with Freemen's picking up the runners-up spot. 

The runner's up – a group from U3 – performed their own version in a TikTok-style of a Spanish play, Don Quixote. The German play from U2 was also recognised by the judges its their creativity and audience engagement.

The Cantonese Club from Freemen’s performed a play at the interval with a strong message of any language (regardless of how many people speak it) can open doors for you and had our Junior School ethos of honest, kind and fun at the heart.

The Languages Department said: “It was a real delight to welcome so many schools and pupils with a passion for languages to Freemen’s. It’d like to thank the dedication of language teachers and the enthusiasm and creativity of the pupils that the event continues to be such an important part of the Freemen’s calendar.”

At Freemen’s we firmly believe it is important to engender a sense of enjoyment and confidence in the language from a very early stage. We have a team of 14 full and part-time staff in the Modern Languages Department, who teach from Form 1 (Year 3) in the Junior School to Upper 6 (Year 13) in the Senior School.

From September 2023, Freemen’s is introducing and exciting new curriculum in KS2 which will give pupils the opportunity to experience a wide range of languages in addition to the traditional French, German and Spanish.

Pupils will be able to learn languages as diverse as Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and South American language called Quechua. 

In KS3, Freemen’s aims to maintain that range and keep options open for Freemen’s linguist by offering five key languages; French, German, Latin, Mandarin and Spanish. At Freemen’s languages are considered to be an integral part of the curriculum and all pupils take at least one language at GCSE.

At Freemen's, we love Languages! from City of London Freemen's School on Vimeo.