Students in Rugby tested their language, tourism and business skills recently when they were set the task of promoting their town to overseas visitors.

The sixty students from Rugby High School, Avon Valley School and Bilton School listened to presentations by two local Business Language Champions before putting their language skills into practise to create posters promoting Rugby as a desirable destination for French athletes taking part in the 2012 Olympic Games.

Gisèle Pellegrini, Director of Positive G and Steven Janes from Wright Hassall LLP, spoke to students about the impact of languages on their careers and helped them to research the vocabulary, images and slogans they would need for their posters.

The schools hope that the winning entry will be displayed in the art gallery in Rugby as well as featuring on the Rugby website and being presented to the Tourism group at Rugby Council.

Yvette Grogan, assistant headteacher at Rugby High School, who hosted the event, was delighted with students’ work and their attitude to the session, she said:

“All the students worked diligently and enthusiastically together to produce some eye-catching and informative posters about Rugby. Many thanks to all those involved in organising and participating in the event especially Gisele and Steven who promoted the importance of languages in careers very successfully.

We would encourage any other schools interested in raising the profile of languages to consider running such an event.” She added.

What the BLCs had to say

Gisèle and Steven were both really pleased with the effort students’ put into their posters, as Gisèle commented:

“I was impressed by the students' creativity and the effort they put into promoting their town. I am sure they understood how valuable languages can be to open up multiple career options and put them in control of their own prosperity. A very enjoyable day!”

To which Steven added:

“I enjoyed telling the students how the languages I learned at school have helped me in my career, from working on the Channel Tunnel project to helping foreign companies set up business in the UK.  The students put a huge amount of effort and enthusiasm into their posters and hopefully many of them will carry that on into studying languages at GCSE and beyond.”

The last word

Gisèle and Steven brought their very different career paths to this event and made the students realise that languages really are beneficial across all industries.  The level of work produced was fantastic and I hope it has helped the students make that connection between languages and career advancement.

It does pose the question are two BLCs better than one?  To which I would have to say initially, no, as all of our BLCs work hard and it often takes just one person to make that difference, but ,if you can get several schools together in one place, two or more Champions works really well!

Pictured: Gisele Pellegrini and Steven Janes with pupils from Rugby High School, Avon Valley School and Bilton School.