French, Swahili, Minionese – and a dragon

At a garden party, just after taking up my current post, I had a fascinating conversation with a diplomat about the intensive language lessons he was having prior to taking up his post in North Macedonia. We do not teach North Macedonian at Windlesham House School – and I cannot imagine there is much take up in schools up and down the land. However, with children on roll from more than 20 nationalities globally, just like the diplomat, as adults, many of them will be taking up roles in the future that require them to learn minority languages – so we need to start equipping them with those skills now.

This got me thinking about our current provision, how can we engage all our pupils and provide a stimulating and relevant curriculum as part of the Windlesham Diploma.

Fast forward a couple of weeks when many heads and registrars attended the Windlesham House School senior schools fair and I took the opportunity to do some grass roots research as to what happens in the MFL departments up and down the land. I concluded that there is very little in common from one school to the next. Some schools stick with the “French only” model, others offered French and Spanish, some rotated through six languages and Mandarin’s popularity seemed to rise and fall with the tide. The only genuinely new idea I heard was linguistics – exploring the nuts and bolts of how languages fit together. That, I realised, was exactly the stimulus I was seeking.

So at Windlesham House, MFL gave way to LCL – Languages, Culture and Linguistics – which is now in its second year.

Languages

Our commitment to traditional language teaching remains strong. All pupils in Years 3–6 study both Spanish and French before selecting one for their Windlesham Diploma, with bespoke provision for scholars. But the biggest shift has been in the pre -prep where languages are no longer banished to the dreadful Friday afternoon slot, rather they are centre stage and celebrated. At the moment, our very youngest pupils are expressing opinions in Swahili. Next term? Who knows. What matters is that languages are fun, active, and celebrated.

Culture

With over 20 nationalities represented in our community, we have an extraordinary cultural resource right here in school and we celebrate this. We invite all of our global citizens to come and ‘dot their spot’ on the LCL departmental map so we can see where in the world they are from. Year 7 Diploma pupils love the opportunity to present to their peers and celebrate important aspects of their culture, including the Songkran festival in Thailand; jollof rice in Nigeria, spring in Japan; vegemite in Australia and linguistic roots of Icelandic.

We celebrate EDL each year and thanks to our Asian community and with links to the Brighton & Hove Chinese Society, last year a dragon – a real Chinese dragon –  descended to help us celebrate ‘Asia Day’ and just a few months later pupils performed a Lion dance with drumming at the Chinese New Year assembly.

Food, too, is part of culture, and our catering team bring the world to our dining hall with themed menus, props, and costumes. Pupils even choose between cuisines – Thai or Chinese, Danish or Italian – making cultural exploration literally part of their daily bread.

Linguistics

The third strand, linguistics, has been a revelation. In its first year, pupils created their own conlangs (constructed languages), following in the footsteps of Minionese. They invented nouns, conjugated verbs, developed syntax, and even wrote descriptive pieces in their newly minted tongues. For our EAL pupils especially, this was a liberating project – celebrating rather than complicating their multilingual experience.

The future looks even brighter, with resources from the UK Linguistics Olympiad and the innovative Wollow programme from Norwich School ready to inspire our pupils to see language as a whole system, not just individual words to memorise.

Looking ahead

Languages, culture, and linguistics are no longer confined to dusty textbooks or tacked onto the timetable. At Windlesham House, they are living, breathing, and central to our pupils’ development as global citizens. Our children are learning not only how to speak in different tongues but how to eat, celebrate, and present across cultures.

As for that Diplomat – he never did offer me a Ferrero Rocher. But what he did offer was a spark of inspiration, and I believe the future of LCL at Windlesham House School is as exciting as any international posting.

Judith Selves and Abigail Dean discussing WoLLoW

References:

Diplomat: Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Skopje is Daniel Fieller

Daniel Fieller speaking in North Macedonian

Wollow: Co-founder of WoLLoW Mrs Abigail Dean at the Norwich School
Email: [email protected]
Tel No. 01603 72843