A CHURCHFIELDS Academy student is celebrating this week after wowing judges with her language skills at a regional competition.

Marta Tavares took part in the MFL Speaking Competition on Tuesday along with her friends Dani Wells and Helena Da Silva Santos in The Royal High School in Bath.

The competition was open to all secondary students from any South West school and provided an opportunity for students to use their foreign language out of the classroom. Ten secondary schools from South West took part in the competition which ran in three age groups, split between non-native speakers and near-native speakers.

Students were able to show off their linguistic abilities in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin as well as Japanese.

Many students included an element of drama in presentations, which made the competition even more challenging for a panel of judges to decide on a winner.

Year 11 student Marta was unanimously crowned the winner in the KS4 non-native speaker category.

Marta said: "I started preparing my Spanish presentation in January so I had three months to create the text which I wanted to be creative and funny. I also had time to think about which objects I could use to make my presentation more interesting.

"I decided to speak about Kenya, I made a zebra and a crocodile as puppets for my presentation. On the day I felt excited but at the same time a bit nervous. I really enjoyed the whole day and I was extremely happy when I heard my name being announced as the winner for the KS4 non-native category. In the future I would like to participate in more language competitions as it was lots of fun."