On Wednesday 15 March, the University of Kent held Languages à la Carte at the Canterbury campus for year 10 students. The event, designed to give students the opportunity to explore new languages, was organised by the Partnership Development Office in collaboration with the School of European Culture and Languages, and the Centre for World Languages.
The day began with an interesting lecture that focused on how the brain stores language, specifically looking at memory and recall. Students also had the opportunity to experience taster sessions in Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin and Italian. The sessions involved a quiz on Portuguese culture and history, and they were taught how to order food in Japanese. They were also provided information about the possibilities of combining one of these languages, along with other European languages, with their chosen university subject.
Students then listened to a presentation by a 4th year French ambassador who spoke about their experience studying abroad at university. This gave students a chance to consider what it would be like to study a language at university, and gave information on exciting opportunities for travel and studying in a different country.
The feedback from the day was extremely positive, with one student stating that it was ‘very useful, interesting and inspiring’. Many of the students who attended the event had a real interest in languages and therefore found the day beneficial when thinking about studying a language at university level.
For more information about this activity, please contact outreach@kent.ac.uk