Six students proved they have the gift of the gab when they took part in a foreign language competition.

Pupils at Honeywell Infant School, in Battersea, spent months brushing up on Italian and Japanese as part of a CD-ROM based language-learning competition run by Eurotalk.

Earlier this year, six students - Hettie Moorcroft, Dan Smith, Roohullah Abbas, Leonie Bellini, Amy Smith and Stella Stylianides - triumphed in the first round after they learned basic Italian.

Then, last month they competed against 42 other children from all over London at the semi-finals in Fulham, where they were tested on their knowledge of Japanese, which they taught themselves over the summer holidays.

Hettie came fourth and Dan fifth - both just missing out on a place in the national finals.

Dan and Amy’s mum, , said: “It's a great competition, as it teaches children not to be afraid of language learning, as well as giving them a vocabulary of some 500 words in the given language plus useful phrases.”

For more information visit eurotalk.co.uk/jlc.