Trowbridge pupils mind their language (From This Is Wiltshire)

Trowbridge pupils mind their language

7:00am Tuesday 17th November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)

It was vive la difference at a Trowbridge school last week when pupils performed a play in both French and English as part of a language exchange programme.

Ten students from The Clarendon College and the Lycée Gustave Flaubert in Rouen, Normandy, devised the play from scratch when they met in France for a week earlier this year.

The play, called The City of Forgotten Secrets, was then finished in England at Clarendon last week and performed there while it was recorded on film to be shown to the rest of the school in Rouen when the French students returned home.

Alison Warren, head of drama at Clarendon, said: “The play was a language exchange project that used drama as a means of giving students a reason to communicate.

“The object of any exchange is for students to improve their general understanding of the opposite nation’s language, but we had realised that when the students come over they spend all their time with their friends and not communicating in their opposite language.”

The students, from Years 9-12, were asked by Mrs Warren to tell stories about promises in their opposite language to help develop the storyline of the play and then to act them out.

It was performed at the Spectrum theatre at Clarendon College on November 12.

The play was the latest collaboration between the two schools who have been partner schools for five years now with exchanges happening every year.

Mrs Warren added: “The students produced some really good material and we’re hoping this drama project will become an annual event for the exchange students.

“But there is an issue over the introduction of various Criminal Records Bureau controls which are putting things like exchanges at risk because students normally stay with their partner families and with the new guidelines in November such procedures are under threat because any parent in England will have to have had a CRB check.

“If there are not enough families for exchange students to stay with they would have to stay in hotels, which would obviously increase costs so some students will not be able to take part.”

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(0)