Year 10 students join a Catalan language taster session at Queen Mary

On 5 July, a group of Year 10 students from different schools visited Queen Mary to learn more about the university and to discover some of the options available to them if they decide to study a languages degree. After a campus tour and a session on how languages can be useful for their careers, they had the chance to attend a series of language taster classes, including German, Russian, Portuguese, and Catalan.

For the interactive Catalan session, offered by our Teaching Assistant Cristòfol Tripiana, the students could learn some key facts such as where Catalan is spoken, how many people speak it, and its legal status. This was followed by an introduction to vocabulary and grammar which helped them see that Catalan has similarities to other Romance languages they are already learning. After presenting some real examples of the use of Catalan, such as in songs and films, the session concluded with an explanation of the options available at Queen Mary to learn Catalan and the benefits from doing so. These include participating in all kinds of events organised by the Centre for Catalan Studies, and the chance to attend one of the Institut Ramon Llull’s summer campuses in Girona and Andorra, Valencia, or Mallorca, among many other activities.