KING’S Ely Senior linguists were on fine form in this year’s MFL Regional Debating Competition at The Perse School.
Eight of our Year 11 students formed four teams to represent King’s in the contest on November 25th, which saw pupils from several schools, including Haileybury School, Stephen Perse and Bishop’s Stortford College, competing.
James MacGillivray, Rufus Hillier, Cristina Guitart Cabanas and Hugh Chippington took on the French debate. Lily McCallum, Robert Banwell, John Lau and Thomas Alderton entered the Spanish debate.
We are delighted to say that both our Spanish teams – Lily and Robert as one team and Thomas and John as the other – won their individual pools and reached the final round, where they debated against each other, and a team from The Perse. In the final round, students had to debate an unprepared motion: ‘Everyone should be vegetarian’. Lily and Robert were crowned the overall winners, and Thomas and John came second!
Our French teams also did extremely well, winning several of their pools.
Esmeralda Salgado, our Head of MFL and Spanish, said: “We are so proud of how well all eight students did in the competition. They all showed amazing linguistic skills and knowledge of the French and Spanish cultures.
“All of the motions debated, apart from the unprepared motion in the final round, were related to the students’ GCSE syllabus, and they had spent several weeks preparing for the competition. Motions included: ‘Nowadays it is not necessary to learn foreign languages other than English’, ‘We should ban screens to children under 12’, and ‘We should ban private schools in England’.
“The competition was fierce and our students should be very proud of how well they all did. The MFL Department certainly is!”