By Community Correspondent, Andrea David-Akanbi

Year 11 language pupils from Ursuline High school are proudly wearing their British Airways badges, which they had ac received as a merit for successfully completing their British Airways Flag Award, spoken German or Spanish.

On 24th September, a British Airways air-hostess paid a 2 hour visit to the language specialist school in order to award girls with the British Airways Flag Award, for which they had worked towards over the course of the previous school year. This was followed by a range of language- based activities, enriching the girls’ skills, with a fun and enjoyable approach.

Used as an adapted version of the internal test, the British Airways Flag Award is an attempt to encourage young people to continue language learning; it aims to encourage links between classroom language learning and the working world, differing to what they learn for their GCSE’s.

The session held at the school included listening, speaking and reading activities in both German and Spanish, enabling language students to present what they had learnt for their award. Much of the activities involved the girls acting as air hostesses, many of them being glad to do so.

Following a 1 hour of activities, the session was ended by a presentation from the air hostess; it informed the girls of the value of language learning and the many horizons it would open to them. The visit was clearly triumphant, as many of the girls left saying, ‘I think I’ll carry on with a language now’