The European Day of Languages (26 September) is the annual opportunity to reinforce the importance we place languages – all languages – to send positive messages to our schools, colleagues and pupils, to raise the profile of all of the Languages we teach and learn, and to celebrate successes! This year ALLNE opened up its annual (Primary and Secondary) schools competition to the whole country: please see the attached flyer for details.
ALLNE has run an annual competition for schools on the European Day of Languages for 10 years with partners in the region, offering prizes for pupils throughout the school sector to mark their creative use of languages other than English. The organisers face the challenge each year of finding a concept that will be appealing, and hopefully inspiring to learners as well as being straightforward for busy teachers to manage within the small amount of time they may have available to celebrate the day. Some examples:
| Year | Concept / Theme | Outcome |
| 2009 | ‘Happy Language Day’ | A card to celebrate languages |
| 2010 | An invitation to the North’ | Invitation |
| 2011 | Citius, Altius, Fortius – Faster , Stronger, Higher | Poster |
| 2014 | Photo writing | Photo + dialogue |
| 2015 | Promises of Peace | Poster |
This year’s competition celebrated languages through the gift of handwriting. The concept was to create a message from anywhere in the world on the theme of celebration and teachers choose a suitable outcome for their classes. The judges received invitation postcards, letters from the past, messages in a bottle, and notes for a time capsule as part of this year’s submissions. René Koglbauer, Director of Network for Languages and Executive Director of the North Leadership Centre, praised this year’s entries: “Pupils and teachers across the country have taken the competition extremely seriously. The judges were delighted by the variety of ideas but also the quality of entries. It is always a pleasure to see the enthusiasm and effort our youngest learners of languages put into their work. We are delighted that this year’s competition attracted a number of excellent contributions from GCSE and A-level students, too.”
You can now find a full list of winners and examples of the items produced for the European Day of Languages Competition 2016 on the Newcastle University website.