Charterhouse interschool Modern Foreign Languages debating competition
Sevenoaks students saw a lot of success at the Charterhouse debating competition earning top spots in both the Spanish and German debates.
In the Spanish section, four students performed extremely well, arguing persuasively on a variety of prepared topics. After defeating a long line of teams on their way, we ended up having both teams in the final competing against each other. Animated, articulate and confident, both Andrei Berzin and Parsa Fouladi spoke with conviction and maturity, and the judges were hugely impressed both with their linguistic ability and their ideas. Marco Chiappo and Paolo Radice Fossati also performed extremely well, and the final decision was very difficult.
The German debating team also was victorious, with Poppy Crosthwaite and Arthuro Stephan fighting a heated debate with the motion ‘Should Rugby be introduced as a compulsory sport in Germany in the Sixth Form?’. They gave an impressive performance against highly competitive schools like Winchester and Tonbridge. Polly Ward and Lydia Chernyavskaya also battled hard but were knocked out by City of London Freeman’s school.
Eighty students entered the competition to debate in French, Spanish and German., representing many of the top local independent and selective state schools and the standard of the competition was very high.
Linguistics Olympiad
We had a really successful round of the Linguistics Olympiad this year. Eight Sevenoaks students competed, at different levels. All received participation awards, with the following winning medals:
Two silver medals at Intermediate Level (Gina Mack, Year 11 and Siomha Keith, Lower Sixth)
One bronze medal at Intermediate Level (Emilia Stranger, Year 11)
Two bronze medals at Foundation Level (Jane Ho, Year 7 and Lily Blackburn, Year 11)
The UK Linguistics Olympiad is run by the Committee for Linguistics in Education and is a school-based competition involving puzzles in language and linguistics. Each year, several thousand school pupils take part.
