Languages

Yet again the Language teachers and students were faced with the constraints and many challenges of lockdowns and remote learning. Nevertheless, resilience, patience and perseverance helped us through. Our Language students continued to practise their Communication Skills in Chinese and Italian, surprising us when we least expected. One such occasion was the Dante Poetry Recitation, which was held online this year and adjudicated by Dr John Lando, Senior Lecturer in Education. Despite the difficult circumstances and cancellations, our students from Year 9-11 persisted in their efforts to impress. Some excellent results were achieved and we are very proud of our students’ commitment and performance.

Results for Salesian:

• 1st and 2nd prizes were awarded to Dylan Rayen (1st) and Patrick Cherry (2nd). • 2 Honours prizes went to our Year 11s, Michael

Amedeo and Daniel Amendola. • 7 Distinctions went to Ruben D’Agostino, Anthony

Saraullo, Ryan Ronald, Marcellino Baselyous, Yianni

Kourelis, Emmanuel Louis and Roman Velona. • 1 Merit was awarded to Jamie Ubachs. Congratulations to all our Poets! Our junior students put their Speaking skills to the test also: “In Italian class we have worked on learning to say family members’ names, and making sentences to describe them in Italian. In this task we had to create a fictional family and answer questions about them. We had to produce 2-3 different sentences for each person, explaining their name, personality, age and what role they had in the family (e.g. Nonno = grandpa). Breakout rooms on Teams were great to practise our sentences and perfect our fluency and pronunciation. The breakout rooms were also a fun chance to socialize with friends and new people.” “In our Chinese classes during the lockdown period, we engaged in numerous individual cultural activities exploring how to develop our understanding of our daily routine in Chinese. Alongside this, we explored how to develop our Chinese vocabulary and sentence structure in relation to particular situations, such as ordering food at a food court or making a shopping list for the week. These tasks were completed collaboratively with a partner to enhance our understanding of the Chinese language thoroughly, and allow us to mimic real-life situations and interactions with those capable of speaking Chinese.”

ms Rita Bonne | Head of Languages

Perry Churchill-King and Xavier Nicholls Year 7 Students

One of the highlights was using objects at home to assemble difficult Chinese characters. This helped our students to improve their reading skills and their understanding of Chinese character structure. George Mastrapas (7B) did a great job in showing his excellent Chinese knowledge and creativity. ‘What is your name?’ ‘My name is George’

Sincere thanks to Miss Melina Barcellona, Mrs Rosa Salemme and Mr Alvin Zhang for providing many meaningful learning activities to engage all students in such a difficult time. Congratulations to all the Language students for their willingness in taking up the many challenges helping them through another difficult year.