The visits
The partners worked together to devise an exciting programme of presentations, visits, and workshops culminating in a project in which the young people created an advertisement to promote the Scottish Football Museum to visitors from French-speaking countries using the Commonwealth games as a context.
To launch the project staff from the SFA and the Scottish Football Museum went to Kilwinning Academy to speak about why language skills are important, and to participate in a series of five workshops which required learners to use their knowledge of French. Learners had to read the Scottish Football Museum’s French leaflets, and match up key phrases in English; they had the opportunity to speak in French to William Gros, one of the players at Kilmarnock Football Club; they had to listen to a French advert about the use of Fairtrade products as the catering company at Hampden, Sodexo, is a French multi-national company.
Learners also had the opportunity to look at Sodexo’s application forms in French and pick out relevant details. The final workshop looked at the need to eat healthily to perform well in sport. Learners had to work out the French for certain foodstuffs using images of food and then decide which ones were the healthy options.
Jim Fleeting, Head of Football Development at the SFA, who launched the project stated:
"I believe young people of today are open to so much more than their parents or guardians. They also have the huge pressure of their peers. Experience is a wonderful thing and it is sometimes hard to sell that experience, but when I visited the school, I set out to engage them to consider all the options they have in front of them. They had very enthusiastic teachers, which is a huge bonus, they also had creative programmes which again can be motivational and they were being challenged, more often than not young people love a challenge..."
After the SFA visit, all pupils from S3 went to the Scottish Football Museum in groups of thirty where they got the opportunity to see the exhibits in the museum and to tour the stadium.
"[The Scottish Football Museum] welcomes around 40,000 visitors annually, of which around 5% are from overseas with the great majority coming from Europe. As English is either not their first language, or they have limited or no spoken English, we look to enhance their visitor experience in whatever way we can and to this end, as we do not presently have any native speakers, we offer an explanatory museum leaflet in four languages in addition to English. These are French, German, Italian, and Spanish which from experience provides cover for the vast majority of our overseas visitors. We became involved in the languages project at Kilwinning Academy as a means of perhaps increasing our output in languages, and also as a means of communicating with a local school on the importance and usefulness of languages in a visitor experience environment. We have found the experience to be a rewarding one as…there has been an engagement with young people who are studying languages and have had the opportunity of visiting the attraction..."
The young people took part in a French treasure hunt, enabling them to transfer their knowledge of French into a different context, using materials created by SCILT. In this way, they learned new vocabulary and reinforced their reading skills.
"When I went on the Hampden trip I enjoyed it. The trip was very informative and the activity around the museum helped me a lot to learn some new words and phrases in French." S3 learner
"I learned lots of facts about football in different countries and it was also a good experience. I also thought the quiz was fun..." S3 learner
Back at school, learners got more opportunities to work on the resources provided by SCILT.
The Advertisment
It was decided that to conclude the project the young people would create and present an advertisement to promote the Scottish Football Museum to foreign visitors to the museum curator.
Showcase final
The advertisements were then judged by staff from The Scottish Football Museum who chose the winning advertisement based on the the use of the target language and the advertisement itself.
The winning group was taken to a French restaurant in Glasgow where they enjoyed ordering their food from a menu in French and chatting to the owner and SCILT staff in French.
