12 The Linguist Vol/56 No/1 2017
www.ciol.org.uk
AWARDS FOCUS
T
hirty students are waiting expectantly (and a little
nervously) to find out which company they will
be teamed up with for the day. The event, a new
one for 2016, is 'Marketing in the Making', organised by
Business Language Champions. Six local companies
have come to work with six teams of language students,
ranging from Years 10 to 12, from different schools in the
area. During the day, the students must find out as much
as they can about their assigned company and create a
short marketing video on an iPad in their target
language about the company's product. At the end
there will be a prize for the best video. This is what we
call "making languages real" for the students.
Ask most young people what careers they can do with
a language and they will say translating or teaching. What
they don't see is the world beyond. At Business Language
Champions (BLC), a social enterprise promoting language
learning,
1
we tell them that, although there is a wealth of
jobs you can do without a language, adding a language
to the mix will open up many opportunities that you
hadn't imagined; that languages will set you apart.
To do this, we recreate business scenarios showing
how languages are used in different careers, bringing
in business people who use languages in their work.
Languages go with anything and everything. Our previous
events have included languages in journalism, the RAF,
event management, science and GCHQ. Coming up, we
have Spanish with fair trade and languages with fashion.
Additionally, we like to encourage gifted linguists to
consider taking on a more exotic language ab initio at
university. To that end, we've run events on Russian,
Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. Students find this
approach fun (and challenging!), and at the same time
start to see that their language learning isn't just another
school subject with no relevance to their later careers.
BLC events also offer additional benefits to the
students and schools involved. Putting young people in
teams and setting them a business challenge encourages
employability skills such as leadership, self-confidence
and team work. According to the Good Career Guidance
report,
2
if a student has five or more 'contacts' with
business people during their time at school, they are
much less likely to become NEET (Not in Education,
Employment or Training). Our events can help push the
Sally Fagan won the 2016 Threlford Cup for her inspiring work
as Director of Business Language Champions. She discusses
her work to motivate young people to study languages
Making of a
champion
ON CEREMONY
Sally Fagan (left),
accepts the Threlford
Memorial Cup at the
IoLET awards event
in November, with
CIOL Chief Executive
Ann Carlisle (right)
