Written by Issac Greaves
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
I first came across Language Perfect at Language World 2012 when @thwartedmum was promoting them there and gave me some free places for the world championships for my students. I must admit, I never initially took the time to find out more about it as it was forgotten in my full bag of goodies from the conference (sorry Annalise) largely because I was generally shattered from the end of term and full-on two day conference. However, a regional ALL email offered 100 places in an email and as I was online at that exact moment I explored the Language Perfect website.
Just watching the trailer for the competition made me think that our students would certainly enjoy participating in something sounding as prestigious as a world competition. I signed up the 100 students straight away. One thing I never really anticipated was how much the students would end up being engaged.
Language Perfect takes a list of vocab and tests the students in translating the word both ways and listening to the word to write the Spanish or the English translation ensuring the students have learned all aspects of the word. Students need to correctly translate the word 3 times to gain 1 point. 500 points would get the students a certificate, 1000 a certificate and entry into the bronze prize pool, 2000 a certificate and entry into the silver prize pool, 3000 a certificate and entry into the gold prize pool, 10,000 a certificate and entry into the ‘elite’ prize pool.
I must admit that I never thought the kids would generally spend very much time on there, but even before the competition had started the kids were desperately trying to get to the top of the class, I was hoping they wouldn’t loose interest so quickly. Every morning and lunchtime during the 10 day competition I was opening the library so the kids had access to computers, one Y7 boy gained over 500 points in one evening (translating well over 2000 words). The competition really gripped the students and there was inter-year competing until the very end. This is some of their feedback, also recorded through the Language Perfect software:
- “As i have been proforming well and answering well i would like to do more and learn more so i would like to continue using this website” – Student 1
- “i love this website thanks mr greaves!” - Student 2
- “It helps so much in learning words, as they repeatedly pop up in a different order it makes you think alot more and put alot more concentration into youre work” - Student 3
- “because i really enjoy learning my languages because i want to live abroad when i am older” - Student 4
- “this site is really helpful with all languages but i couldnt have done it all without my spanish teacher mr greaves, thank you!” - Student 5
Currently my school only has KS3 Spanish which all students started last September and have only had one (100 min) lesson a fortnight. These were the final results:
