Let's celebrate languages: European Day of Languages activities
This PowerPoint of French, German and Spanish activities is designed to be used flexibly – in language classes or in tutor time, on a pick-and-mix basis or as a complete lesson.
The slides on famous tourist attractions and festivals can be used as stand-alone activities for the European Day of Languages, while the slides on loanwords and cracking a linguistic code can be used as a resource to inspire budding linguists in key stage 3 to carry on studying languages for GCSE or to encourage GCSE language students to take up a new language at A-level.
The PowerPoint includes activities on:
- French, German and Spanish words used in English
- English words used in French, German and Spanish
- countries where French, German and Spanish are spoken
- famous places in French-speaking, German-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries
- festivals in French-speaking, German-speaking and Spanish-speaking countries.
To provide opportunities for a decolonised lesson in which students can think critically about the relationship between languages and colonial power, the resource also includes reading texts on:
- why French is the official language of Niger
- why German is the national language of Austria (and why Austria is not part of Germany)
- why Spanish is the official language of Mexico.
The texts are in English, with jumbled versions in French, German and Spanish. Whether students speak that language or not, they should be able to use dates, place names, cognates and punctuation to unjumble the target language texts and find the translations of English words. The English and TL texts are also provided in Word/PDF format.
Finally, there is information about how the Rosetta Stone was deciphered, with links to an online article and video for students to find out more.
