I’ve been subscribing to The Linguist for years. It’s a magazine aimed at professional linguists, which means mostly translators, interpreters and teachers. I’ve often thought, “Hmm, I wish they’d do an article on X,” or “I ought to write them a feature on Y.”

Finally I’ve done something about it: here’s an article on school twinning, which I’ve had published in the current edition.
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Twin and entwine Twinning gives an extra boost to languages in schools for both teachers and pupils, says Philippa Law

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Exchange visits have long been part of language learning. There’s nothing like being immersed in a language for a week or two to improve your fluency and confidence, and learning vocabulary in the ‘real world’ can be so much more memorable than in the classroom. As an A-level student, it was only when I was faced with a dormitory full of giggling French girls that I realised the difference between je l’aime (what I’d said) and je l’aime bien (what I’d meant).

These days, schools often do more than straightforward exchange visits, ‘twinning’ internationally with far-flung schools in a variety of imaginative ways.

On an exchange trip to Russia, 14 year old pupils at Calday Grange Grammar School in Merseyside used their Russian to interview survivors of the siege of Leningrad. The teenagers were told moving, personal stories of the hardships people endured in the 1940s, such as families grinding up furniture to bulk out bread dough with the sawdust. “A lot of the elderly people said they’d never told anyone these stories before,” says headteacher Andrew Hall. “They wouldn’t have told an adult, but they were happy to talk to a child who was the same age they were at the time.”

On their return to Merseyside, the pupils translated the material they had collected into English and, with the help of their Russian teacher, Katya Hughes, turned it into a book called The Siege of Leningrad through a Child’s Eyes.

Hall says that twinning is invaluable. “You see the satisfaction in their eyes when they realise they’re not learning an abstract subject, they can actually communicate with other people.”

As well as facilitating Russian exchanges, the school regularly swaps teachers with Hangzhou Foreign Language School in China. “They send us a teacher for about 12 weeks and we send two teachers back for five weeks in the summer term each year.” An impressive 240 pupils at Calday Grange have chosen to study Mandarin, all aiming at GCSE or higher.

The partnership has benefited other schools in the area too. While offering support and advice to primary schools thinking of introducing Mandarin, Calday Grange teachers found that there were few teaching materials available for younger learners. So they worked together with teachers from Hangzhou to produce Maomao and the Bamboo, a dual language children’s book, illustrated by a Calday Grange pupil.

Hall admits that these school partnerships, which emphasise face-to-face language learning, can be expensive. “For our pupils, a trip to China costs around £800 and a trip to Russia is about £500.”

But twinning doesn’t have to be costly. When schools have access to email and Skype, pupils and teachers can interact with native speakers of another language quickly, easily and above all, cheaply.

The Ridings’ Federation Winterbourne International Academy (TRFWIA) in Bristol received British Council funding to help pay for initial reciprocal visits with its twin school in Tomsk, Russia. Now that the schools have agreed on how they want the twinning project to work, staff and students communicate by email and videoconference, which requires no additional money to maintain.
The partnership began in the English department and later spread to language classes. “Russian is now offered to all students on a voluntary basis, with the aim to offer accreditation in the future,” says Shelley Swift, head of international learning. Swift believes that the twinning project has given students the motivation to learn Russian, because it enables them to explore “relevant topics with real people”.

But while TRFWIA has found online technology useful in bringing native speakers into the classroom, Awsworth Primary School in Nottingham has not been so lucky. “Online links are incredibly difficult,” says international co-ordinator Ian Baxter, who uses twinning to support Spanish teaching for 7- to 11-year-olds. “It’s been a struggle because the Mexican school we work with has limited ICT access. Their teacher has to go to the local internet cafe to pick up messages.” He admits that sometimes it’s easier for the teachers to send letters to each other by post, which lacks the immediacy of communicating online.

Nonetheless, Baxter is positive about the benefits of international twinning. He says his pupils love it “when things are presented in a new and exciting way, and things from another culture engage them immediately.”

And, for Awsworth, twinning with a Spanish-speaking school is as much about inspiring the teachers as the pupils. “We don’t have any fluent speakers on the staff, so it’s a real challenge. The international links help the language come alive.”

Awsworth was matched with twin school Veinte de Noviembre through the Háblame linking project, which has put a number of Nottingham primary schools in contact with partners in Coahuila, Mexico. Keeping in touch with their Mexican counterparts allows teachers in Nottingham to keep practising and improving their Spanish. They can also share ideas for language classes and learn from their partner school’s experience. In this way, twinning has helped staff to develop language teaching techniques.

In addition to its Mexican partnership, Awsworth Primary is twinned with a number of other schools around the world. Although these links are motivated more by a general desire to “open up the world” to children, they present further opportunities to enthuse pupils about foreign languages. When the children were fundraising for their twin school in Tanzania, for example, it was a good excuse to introduce them to the Tanzanian language, Swahili.

There are many different schemes and organisations that can match schools with partners overseas. Some are free, others charge registration fees. Some will find a school a partner within a day or two, others may take several months. Some will provide activities and support, others will simply establish the link. Global Gateway is a kind of ‘dating’ site for schools. It’s free to register, post an advert, search for partner schools and reply to other schools who are looking for a twin. Alternatively, rafi.ki is an online learning community that gives schools access to tools, such as instant messaging. Member schools can take part in existing projects using the lesson plans and interactive resources provided on the website. And there’s BBC World Class, which doesn’t organise twinning projects, but can put you in touch with a selection of helpful organisations.

Schools that already have a twin can access the Comenius Bilateral Partnerships programme, which offers travel grants to enable teachers and pupils to visit other European countries.

Another approach is to mix languages with a practical application. Achievers International teaches students to run their own import-export business in collaboration with a partner school overseas.

Twinning takes perseverance, says Baxter. “There might be misgivings within the school at first,” he acknowledges, “But don’t be held back. And don’t rely on just one link because if that fails, your whole project will fall down.”

Baxter says it’s important to get other people on board, too. He meets with a group of staff once every half term to discuss twinning projects. “Don’t be the only person pushing international links.”

Swift agrees, adding that the key to success is “mutuality in the partnership goals, strong communication and sustainable and realistic projects”.