In July we showcased one of the winning entries in the Years 7-11 category of our 2018 French Film Competition. This competition asked pupils to watch a French film and produce an alternative ending. The film selected for the Years 7-11 category was Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s Une vie de chat (2010). The point in the film at which the rewriting picked up was the 49:20 minute mark, at the moment when Nico says ‘Allez, accroche-toi bien Zoë’.
We are now pleased to publish the other winning entry in this category, a brilliantly conceived and produced film by Ethan Ross and co. Take a look at the film below – we hope it inspires you to produce your own films in French!
Teachers, if you are looking to introduce some ‘drama’ into your MFL classroom you might be interested in these exercises for multilingual drama teaching, created by the Creative Multilingualism Project with the Oxford Playhouse.
This week on Adventures on the Bookshelf we are pleased to showcase one of the winning entries from this year’s French film competition. This competition asked pupils to watch a French film and produce an alternative ending. The film selected for the Years 7-11 category was Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s Une vie de chat (2010). The point in the film at which the rewriting picked up was the 49:20 minute mark, at the moment when Nico says ‘Allez, accroche-toi bien Zoë’.
One of the winners in this category was Priya Gurcha, who produced an illustrated storyboard. Here, we see Priya’s brilliant alternative ending, which is full of drama and literal flights of imagination. Félicitations, Priya!
This year’s Spanish Flash Fiction Competition ran from December to March and received almost 400 entries. We were amazed at the entrants’ command of, and enthusiasm for, Spanish, and the imagination and grasp of narrative techniques evident in the submissions. Stories ranged from a tale about a vegetarian lion to one about a zombie Christmas. We would like to thank everyone who submitted an entry. The judges were throughly entertained, and choosing the winners was no easy task. Congratulations to the winners below and, to everyone who took part – please do continue to use your languages creatively!
Years 7-11 Category
The winner for this category was “Traición?” by Ivo Reeve. Besides the author’s excellent command of Spanish, we were especially impressed by how well wrought the text is: how Ivo managed to balance poetic language with military description. All of that in a piece of veritable historical flash fiction. We also want to commend the two runners-up for this category: “El monstruo brillante” by Chloe Cheng and “No la sorprendió cuando vinieron…” by Elizabeth McDonald, who both showcased excellent command of Spanish and true literary sensitivity. Finally, we want to give an honorary mention to Savannah Culpepper’s piece, “Una noche, Jesús y yo…”, for its deft use of humour and ingenuity.
Years 12-13 Category
The first prize in this category goes to “Las bufandas” by Charlotte Collerton (Year 12), a seemingly simple yet powerful and tender story. We would like to congratulate Charlotte for her excellent command of idiomatic Spanish, but also her poetic sense of rhythm that permeates both the form (vocabulary and sentence structure) and the content of the text (the action of knitting, the rhythm of seasons and sequence of generations). There was one close runner-up: “El día que lo tosió…” by Hannah Corsini (Year 12), which truly impressed us with her originality and her use of bold yet successful metaphors. The text itself, which describes sickness through literary terms and references, made us think of a Quixotic “literary sickness” or “literatosis”, as it were: seeing everything in the world through the lens of literature (we are afraid to report no cure has been found against this “terrible disease” yet…). Lastly, we would like to give an honorary mention to two entries: “El francotirador” by Jacob Murray (Year 12) and “El estimado rey” by Oliver Pearey (Year 12) for their underlying philosophical message and their successful use of narrative tension in such brief texts, including a final plot twist that leaves readers pondering and quesstioning their own assumptions.
We hope to feature some of the winning entries on this blog in the coming weeks. ¡ Felicidades !
Budding Germanists out there might be interested in delving into a ‘German Classic’: Friedrich Schiller’s Maria Stuart. For the second year, the Oxford German Network is running an essay competition for Sixth-Formers who have studied German at GCSE level (you do not need to be studying German at A Level or equivalent). There are prizes of £500, £300, and £100 to be won. The deadline for submissions is noon on Wednesday 12 September 2018. More information is available here or read on to find out more…
The Prize celebrates a classic text of German literature, with resources to make it accessible whether or not you have experience of German literature. This year, the prize focuses on Friedrich Schiller’s play Maria Stuart, a fascinating historical drama about how Elizabeth I came to have Mary, Queen of Scots executed. The great centrepiece of the play is a gripping confrontation between Elisabeth and Maria – in fact, it never happened but it makes for electrifying drama.
You will find a rich array of material including podcasts and YouTube links on Maria Stuart: http://www.ogn.ox.ac.uk/content/german-classics-prize. Candidates may also request a special reader with extracts from secondary literature on the work (see contact details on the website).
The task: Write a 2000 to 3000-word essay in English, independently and unsupervised, over the summer holidays between Lower and Upper Sixth/ between Years 12 and 13.
The prize, and funding of the accompanying resources, have been generously donated by Jonathan Gaisman, QC, a highly distinguished commercial barrister who was introduced to German literature at school and still finds German literature and culture the most intellectually rewarding part of his life. He would like to give young people the opportunity to be inspired as he was when he first encountered German literature.
Students willing to have a go at undertaking this challenge have the possibility of winning a glittering cash prize worth £500, £300 or £100. All participants will get a certificate of participation.
The prize is aimed at German learners in the UK. It does not assume that participants will be taking English beyond GCSE or that they have a prior interest in literature. The rationale for asking Modern Languages students to write an essay in English is to give an opportunity for UK learners to engage with a linguistically and intellectually challenging German work in the linguistic medium they are most comfortable with. While participants may want to use a translation to support their understanding, we recommend reading the work in the original to get the most out of it and take advantage of the opportunity it offers for expanding German competence. All quotations must be in German.
Friedrich Schiller by Ludovike Simanowiz
As with all the Oxford German Olympiad competitions, we aim to create a level playing field for students from different backgrounds, schools, and levels of linguistic competence. The submission form must be signed by the participant’s teacher, who is also asked to submit the essay online. All sixth-formers in UK schools with a GCSE or equivalent UK qualification in German are entitled to take part, including students who are not taking a German A-level or equivalent qualification. Native and near-native speakers of German are not excluded but are required to declare their linguistic status on the submission form. Our prime criterion is the quality of intellectual and imaginative engagement with the work evident in the essay while taking account of prior opportunity.
Any questions should be addressed to the German Classic Prize Coordinator: Joanna Raisbeck, joanna.raisbeck@some.ox.ac.uk.
This post was written by Dr Alex Lloyd, a lecturer in German at Magdalen College & St Edmund Hall. Dr Lloyd is a key member of the team behind the Oxford German Network, and a convenor of the Oxford Song Network. Today she tells us about when German and song come together…
How do you translate the words of a song into another language so that it still fits the music when it’s sung in the new version? This was the challenge my students set us when we offered to translate Friedrich Schiller’s poem ‘An die Freude’ [Ode to Joy] for the collaborative translation collection, The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives.
Schiller’s poem is well known in the setting by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony. My second-year students suggested we attempt a translation which rhymed and scanned like the original and which could be sung to Beethoven’s tune. I had done translation workshops with students in the past which involved working with song texts (you can listen to some examples of German World War One texts here), and had also started to explore the theory behind producing singable or ‘vocal’ translations. So, we decided to try and fit our text to Beethoven’s music. Each student took responsibility for one or more verses of the text, and we discussed their ideas and solutions in our weekly translation class. The students enjoyed the collaborative aspect of the experience (it’s one thing translating by yourself, but quite another to have to reach compromises and negotiate!), as well as the challenge of thinking about text and music. One student reported: ‘It was great fun collaborating for this translation, as we realised we all emphasised different aspects of the original poem and had different interpretations of some of the images, so we had to pitch our ideas against each other to come up with a final version.’ When we were translating, we had to take a number of factors into account: the style and structure of the text, the register (formal or informal?), the literal meaning of words as well as the associations they have within society and culture. The first few lines of the first verse will show you what I mean:
Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
[Joy, the gods’ own spark of beauty
daughter of Elysium,
Fire-drunk pilgrims’ solemn duty
to your kingdom we shall come!]
This is not the sort of thing that comes up in everyday conversation.
Often, it’s actually quite difficult to translate a text without losing something of the original – references, sounds made by the position of words in a sentence – and to say just exactly what the original text did. To translate a text so that it also fits the rhythms of a song is a very tall order. Indeed, this kind of translation has been called impossible. We had to think about the style and structure of the music as well as the text: phrasing, rhythm, stress, range, word painting. We also needed to think about the needs of the singers (not putting awkward vowel sounds on a very high note, for example), as well as the function of the song (the tune is used as the European Union’s anthem though performed without words), and the needs of the audience members who are listening to it. To use a technical term from translation studies, we had to ‘compensate’, by trying to introduce things elsewhere to achieve the same effects overall. Vocal translation encourages us to ask questions about the dynamic relationships between text and music. Perhaps have a go at translating your favourite song from English into German. Can you make it fit the music without sounding really strange?
Singable translation might be difficult, but it’s something we can encounter without thinking about it. Many people at Christmas sing the carol ‘Silent Night’ which is actually a translation of a German song, ‘Stille Nacht’. Or, take David Bowie’s famous song ‘Heroes’ which he also performed in German and in French. One of the students who worked on the translation is now doing an extended project on the way hymns change between languages, and another will be taking a course on advanced German translation next year. A group of students and I performed the singable English translation of the ‘Ode to Joy’ at the launch of the book, The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives, in November. ‘It was a lovely surprise to be a sent a video months later of our translation being sung at the relay reading event in the Taylorian!’.
And you can see a clip of Dr Lloyd and her students singing ‘An die Freude’ here…
This was the eighth year of Oxford University’s highly popular French Film Competition, where secondary school pupils are invited to watch selected French films according to their age category (Years 7-11 or Years 12-13) and produce an alternative ending of their own devising. The 2018 film selection was Une vie de chat (Years 7-11) and Des Hommes et des Dieux (Years 12-13). As in previous years, the competition attracted a large number of entries: over 140, from more than 50 different schools.
The judges were greatly encouraged by both the strength and the diversity of this year’s field of applications. There was a notable increase in the number of video clips and storyboard submissions, and overall a great amount of creativity was on display; in both age categories, students channelled their energies into elaborate film scripts and imaginative essays. Many entrants showed commendable French language skills. Shortlisting was a difficult task, with fine margins separating the winners from many other pieces that showed impressive talent. The most successful entries managed to develop plot and character convincingly from the tone established in earlier scenes, picking up smoothly from the set starting-point, with compelling dialogue and plausibly innovative action, all within the specified limit of 1500 words.
In the Years 7-11 category, the joint winning entries were those of Priya Gurcha and Ethan Ross et al. Priya produced a dazzlingly illustrated storyboard that closely reflected the style of the original dessin animé, and caught the judges up in its alternative high-octane conclusion. Meanwhile Ethan and his team produced a very well sequenced, French-language film clip in which comic touches built to a gripping, poignant ending. The runner-up in this category was Sarah Shah with an imaginative and beautifully detailed screenplay, demonstrating convincing psychological development – complete with flashbacks – and a truly cinematic perspective. Highly commended by the judges are Auj Abbas and Daeun Shin. Commendations also go to Joshua Brookes, Kelly Chae, Ananya Ajit, Sofia Ispahani, Tyla Orton, Scarlet Somerville, and Bruno de Almeida Barreto .
In the older age category (Years 12-13) the winner is Florence Smith for her stunningly original ending to Des hommes et des Dieux. This well researched script reconsidered the legacy of the Tibhirine monks via a contemporary newsflash, allowing Florence to reflect on the viability of the monks’ Christian charity and respect for Muslims in France today. Runner-up is Peace Silly, who impressed the judges with her inventive re-imagining of the plot’s outcome, developed around the crux of the supply of medicines, and especially touching in its focus on the friendship between Frère Christophe and Rabbia. In this category, Max Thomas and Trinity Mae Dore-Thomas are highly commended, while commendations go to John John de Weert, Will Foxton, Maya Szaniecki, Georgia Brawne, Martin Christopherson, and Clementine Lussiana.
Some further notes from the judges on the overall field of entries for individual films follow below:
Une vie de chat: a contemporary classic by Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol, it received over a hundred submissions. At least twenty of these were worthy of consideration for a commendation, with the lower end of the age range (7-9) faring strongly. There was an abundance of entertaining entries that majored on a roof-top fight, shoot-out, car chase and/or tragic death of one of the ‘goodies’. Various entries swapped Notre-Dame for the Eiffel Tower when setting the final showdown between Nico and Costa. The zoo also crept back into several entries. More than one hit upon the idea that Nico might be Zoe’s father (one film clip even had him being magically transformed into the cat!). The most convincing entries were those that managed to engage all the major characters in a plausibly dynamic climax – without losing the quirkiness of the original.
Des Hommes et des Dieux: this is a demanding film that requires considerable background cultural knowledge (or research) in order to be best appreciated. Pleasingly, a number of entries showed exactly this, some quoting the Bible and Arabic phrases to evoke the mind-set of the French monks and the Algerians with whom they mix. We received a good number of entries in a high standard of French. A key challenge here for the students was to develop one or two unusual ideas without introducing implausible characterisation (particularly of Christian). Some entries were beautifully written, but ended up keeping close to the actual ending with the monks’ execution.
We hope you all enjoyed watching the films and working on your entries, and hope you will continue to pursue your interest in French cinema and culture!
This post was written by Dr Richard McClelland, a stipendiary lecturer in German and St Hugh’s and New Colleges. Dr McClelland gives an overview of this year’s Taylor lecture, by Neil MacGregor. You can watch the lecture here.
On Tuesday 13th February 2018 we were thrilled to welcome Neil MacGregor for the annual Taylor lecture. An alumnus of the university, MacGregor is the former head of the British Museum and the instigator of the popular exhibition, radio series and book ‘Germany: Memories of a Nation’. His lecture, ‘The Humboldt Forum: Two Brothers, a Palast and a Schloß’ outlined the background to his current position as Founding Director of the Humbodlt Forum in Berlin. When completed, the Forum will occupy a cluster of buildings and will contain museums, teaching rooms for the nearby Humboldt University and public spaces open to all. The Forum will be located at the eastern end of Berlin’s Unter den Linden, the long imperial boulevard that stretches across Berlin to the Brandenburg Gate. And, as MacGregor states, it has caused quite a stir…
This isn’t, after all, just any building site, but one that is redeveloping what MacGregor describes as ‘the most contested of all of Berlin’s “sites of memory”’: the former site of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss. Completed in the middle of the 17th century and exuding Baroque opulence, the Schloss was located on the famous Museuminsel. A deliberate choice, this site represented the bringing together of influential strands of public life as a physical embodiment of the Prussian and subsequently Imperial German crown: power in the palace, knowledge in the museums and, thanks to the nearby Berlin Dom, religion.
The Berliner Stadtschloss under construction. Photo by Ziko van Dijk.
Following heavy damage in the Second World War, the authorities of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) decided to tear the palace down. This decision was met with public outcry because it could have been saved; indeed, the similarly damaged museums were spared demolition. But the imperial grandeur did not project the correct image for the newly-founded workers’ state. In its place the authorities constructed the Palast der Republik, a people’s palace that housed the Volkskammer, the parliament of the GDR, and recreational facilities including a bowling alley. In 1990 it even became the home of the first democratically elected parliament in East Germany. Following Unification, however, it was left empty, the decaying shell an uneasy reminder of the communist past right in the heart of Germany’s new capital. In a decision that echoes the one taken some fifty years earlier, authorities demolished the building in 2008 because it contained asbestos. Or so runs the official line; again, the building didn’t project the right image for the new Republic.
Neil MacGregor gives the Taylor lecture, February 2018. Photo by Henrike Laehnemann.
In developing the Forum, then, MacGregor and the other directors must negotiate the legacy of imperial Germany, and the legacy and memory of the GDR – and address the questions, debates and often visceral reactions that each legacy provokes. The Forum, then, is an engagement with multiple strands of Germany’s history. Furthermore, it also embodies a very public debate on the legacy and impact of the nation’s past. It raises questions of how Germany remembers its past, and what this mean for the future image of Germany being projected globally. And, as MacGregor said, it also represents a very different narrative of the past than typically addressed in Britain.
We have just launched our annual competitions in French and Spanish. Details are below. If you have any questions please contact schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. We look forward to reading your entries! Bonne chance! ¡mucha suerte!
Spanish Flash Fiction Competition
Did you know that the shortest story in Spanish is only seven words long? Here it is:
‘Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí’ (Augusto Monterroso, “El dinosaurio”).
Write a story in Spanish of not more than 100 words, and send it to schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.ukby noon on Friday 30th March 2018 with your name, age and year group, and the name and address of your school. A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning entry in each category (Years 7-11 and 12-13), with runner-up prizes of £25. The judges will be looking for creativity and imagination as well as good Spanish! The winning entries will be published on our website.
French Film Competition
The Department of French at Oxford University is looking for budding film enthusiasts in Years 7-11 and 12-13 to embrace the world of French cinema. To enter the competition, students in each age group are asked to re-write the ending of a film in no more than 1500 words. You can work in English or French. We won’t give extra credit to entries written in French – this is an exercise in creativity, rather than a language test! – but we do encourage you to give writing in French a go if you’re tempted, and we won’t penalize entries in French for any spelling or grammar mistakes.
The judges are looking for plausible yet imaginative new endings, picking up the story from the point specified (see below). There are no restrictions as to the form the entry might take: screen-play, play-script, prose, prose with illustrations. We’d also love to see filmed entries (e.g. on YouTube): feel free to experiment!
For the 2018 competition we have chosen the following films for each age bracket:
Years 7-11: Une vie de chat (2010, dir. Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol)
Years 12-13: Des Hommes et des dieux (2010, dir. Xavier Beauvois)
A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning student in each age group, with runner-up prizes of £25.
Your re-writing must pick up where the film leaves off, from the following points:
Une vie de chat: from 49:20, when Nico says: ‘Allez, accroche-toi bien Zoë’.
Des Hommes et des dieux: from 1:38:50, where Christian says ‘J’ai longtemps repensé à ce moment-là…’
Here are the trailers, to give you a taster:
DO’S AND DON’TS!
DO keep to the word limit (1500 words)! Going over will lead to disqualification.
DO use your imagination, and present your re-writing in any format you like – essay, screenplay, short film, storyboard, etc…. There is nothing stopping you from watching the ‘real’ ending and then modifying it as you see fit. Indeed, you might find this helpful. We’re looking for creative, entertaining and inventive new endings, which address as fully and plausibly as possible the strands of the story that are left unresolved at the end-points we’ve specified above.
DO send in (through your teacher) individually named submissions. If you work in a group, the entry must still be sent under one name only: this is just to ensure as much as possible parity and fairness between entries, and to avoid any distinction between smaller and larger groups. There is a limit of 10 entries per school per age group.
DO make sure you give your teacher enough time to approve and forward your submission!
DON’T worry about which language you write in – and if you write in French (which we encourage, if you would like to), remember we do not penalise grammatical errors or spelling mistakes.
DON’T forget to include a filled-in cover-sheet, signed by your teacher. Without this, your entry will not be judged.
DON’T worry if you’re at the lower end of your age-range (especially Years 7 and 8). We particularly encourage entries from younger students, and we’ll take your age into account when judging your entry.
Where can I or my school/college get hold of the films?
The DVDs are readily and affordably available via Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.amazon.fr). The films may also be available through legal streaming services (e.g. Amazon Prime, Google Play, or Blinkbox).
How do I send in my entry?
We’d like all your school’s entries to be submitted via your teacher please. Ask your teacher to attach your entries to an email, along with a cover sheet, which you can download here, and send it to french.essay@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk by noon on 31st March 2018. NB, to avoid missing the deadline, we suggest that you aim to give your teacher your entry and completed cover sheet by 24th March at the latest.
It’s quiz time again, and once again, there’s an opportunity to feel smug and superior by spotting mistakes made by French native speakers. Last time, we were hunting out grammatical errors that unfortunate French folk had decided to tattoo on their bodies for all eternity. This time is if anything even worse. The mistakes are in picture books aimed at teaching very young French children how to read.
Below are pages from five picture books, with one mistake in each image. Can you find them all? Answers at the bottom of the post.
(Hint: as is common when native speakers make mistakes, all the errors sound OK when you read them out loud, but are written wrongly on the page, rather like English speakers confusing their, there and they’re.)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Scroll down for answers…
Should be ‘ils tendent le cou‘ (‘they stretch their necks out’).
Should be ‘qu’il fasse moins chaud’ (‘until it gets cooler’).
Should be ‘rassemble’ (‘gathers’).
Should be ‘s’écrie’ (‘shouts out’). ‘S’écrit’ means ‘writes to himself’.
Should be ‘histoires’(stories).
Images borrowed from the French website Bescherelle ta mère (note: contains adult language!).
Telling a story in just 100 words is no easy task, but our entrants were up for a challenge. What impressed the judges was not just how complete these stories could be, but how they managed to surprise the reader, reimagining familiar situations from a new perspective: we saw skeletal revellers with fleshy make-up in a reversal of the ‘Día de los Muertos’ celebrations, and had snapshots of human society as glimpsed by a cast of insects – often all too briefly. These were stories with a sting in the tale. Others were more suggestive, hinting allusively at a character’s back-story or inviting the reader to think further about what wasn’t on the page; some even scorned 100 words as frivolous luxury, one following in the footsteps of those ‘baby shoes, never worn’, another offering the cheekily open-ended ‘Y luego escribí éste.’ But the best married invention and creativity with accurate and ambitious Spanish, showing how much can really be done within the deceptively wide scope of the microcuento.
The judges chose to award a joint first prize in the Years 7-11 category, and a first prize in the Years 12-13 category. The winning entries, along with the judges’ comments, can be found below.
Oliver Sabatés (Year 7)
“No leas esto” fue el título del libro que David encontró mientras buscaba entre las cajas que se encontraban en el ático y, como le llamó la atención, decidió abrir la primera página. “Este libro le pertenece a David” eran las palabras que se encontraban escritas. En la siguiente página, nada y nada más por las siguientes cinco páginas. Siguió pasando hojas en blanco hasta encontrarse con un nuevo texto. En esta ocasión, se leía “que aburrido, duérmete y muere”. Al terminar de leer esto, David pensó: “que aburrido”. Dejó de leer, se fue a dormir y nunca más despertó.
Judges’ remarks:
Oliver’s story was extremely well written, in Spanish that was accurate, authentic and natural. The judges also liked the story’s premise, which – as the story itself has it – ‘llamó la atención.’ It was a witty idea, elegantly realized.
Anna Clark (Year 10)
La gente dice que este hombre es bueno para darse cuenta de las cosas. Tal vez, estaban equivocados. El hombre sólo puede concentrarse en una cosa ahora. Esos zapatos delicados. El hombre había visto esos zapatos antes. Eran los zapatos que limpió cuando estaban sucios, o reemplazar cuando los extremos del cordones eran gastados y deshilachados. Esos cordones colgaban sin vida por encima del balcón. En esos zapatos, veía los pies, las piernas… no oyó los sollozos desde arriba o las punzadas ocasionales de la cuerda tensora mientras el pesado cuerpo amenazaba con caer al suelo. Sólo esos zapatos.
Judges’ remarks:
What made this story stand out was its combination of the focus on a single moment which flash fiction often elicits (here, interestingly, via the character’s own highly focused gaze) together with brief glimpses of something greater. The story’s suggestion that this short-term focus was a necessary strategy to block out other, broader, and painful memories was evocative and compelling.
Harry Glyn John (Year 12)
La Misión
Hoy morí.
Me habían dicho que sería pan comido: solo una simple misión para conseguir provisiones. El enemigo no sería consciente de lo que ocurría y podría ayudar a mi familia a sobrevivir.
Asaltamos la casa de nuestro enemigo declarado. Repentinamente escuché un silbido como una serpiente y se armó la de San Quintín. A mi alrededor, mis compañeros afligidos estaban ahogándose en una nube densa de gas antes de caer al suelo. Intenté huir de la atmosfera venenosa porque quería vivir.
Pensé en mi media naranja y entonces llegó la nada…
No fue nada fácil ser una avispa.
Judges’ remarks:
A clipped and attention-grabbing beginning; a description of the character’s predicament in terms that court empathy; and a final ability to pull the rug out from under the reader’s feet – this story was impressive for how much could be crammed into so few words, all composed in accurate and idiomatic Spanish.
Our 2018 Spanish Flash Fiction competition will be launched in December. Watch this space!
A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!
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