On Saturday 8th June 2024, New College will host a study day for Year 12 state school students who are interested in pursuing a degree at a Russell Group University in either:
Modern Languages
English Literature
A combination of the two
New College Front Quad
This cross-curricular study day will explore the following essay question:
“In reading the literary works of the past, to what extent should we judge them according to our own moral and literary standards?”
The study day will include academic sessions, an essay writing session, lunch in the dining hall, and a tour of the college.
Up to £100 in travel expenses will be paid for by New College.
Following the event, attendees will be encouraged to enter an essay competition which has a £500 cash prize. In addition, £250 worth of books will be donated to the winner’s school library.
In order to apply, you must be a Year 12 student in a UK state school or sixth form college. You should also be considering a degree in either Modern Languages, English Literature or a combination of the two at a Russell Group University.
We’re delighted to announce the return of our ever-popular French and Spanish flash fiction competitions for school students. If you are learning French and/or Spanish in Years 7-13, you are invited to send us a *very* short story to be in with a chance of winning up to £100. Read on to find out more…
What is Flash Fiction?
We’re looking for a complete story, written in French or Spanish, using NO MORE THAN 100 WORDS.
What are the judges looking for?
We’ll be looking for imagination and narrative flair, as well as your ability to write in French or Spanish. Your use of French or Spanish will be considered in the context of your age and year group: in other words, we will not expect younger pupils to compete against older pupils linguistically. For inspiration, you can read last year’s winning entries for French here, and for Spanish here.
What do I win?
There are two categories: Years 7-11 and Years 12-13. A first prize of £100 will be awarded to the winning entry in each category, with runner-up prizes of £25. The winning entries will be published on this blog, if you give us permission to do so.
How do I enter?
The deadline for submissions is noon on Thursday 31st March 2022. If you would like to submit a story in French please do so via our online submission portal here. If you would like to submit a story in Spanish please do so here.
You may only submit one story per language but you are welcome to submit one story in French AND one story in Spanish if you would like to. Your submission should be uploaded as a Word document or PDF.
Please note that, because of GDPR, teachers cannot enter on their students’ behalf: students must submit their entries themselves.
If you have any questions, please email us at schools.liaison@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
Readers of the blog may remember that Round 1 of the ever-popular Oxford German Network’s Olympiad opened in September, this year on the theme of ‘Natur und Technik‘. We are now pleased to announce that Round 2 has now launched, with a further set of competitions for students in Year 10 upwards. The deadline is 24 April 2020. Read on to find out more about Round 2, and remember – Round 1 remains open until 13 March 2020.
Task 1 – for students in Years 10-13
Ludwig van Beethoven. Prize: £100
Task:
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) is reckoned to be the most widely
performed composer in the world. Contribute to his 250th anniversary!
Write a blog post (max. 350 words) or create a video (max. 4 minutes) on one of the following topics, or invent your own:
Der taube Komponist
Beethoven und die Französische Revolution
Rock mit Beethoven
Alternatively write a review of a real or fictional Beethoven concert (max. 350 words).
In
1943 five students and a professor at the University of Munich were
arrested, interrogated, tried, and executed. They were members of The
White Rose (Die Weiße Rose), a group that secretly wrote and distributed
leaflets calling on the Germans to resist Hitler. The White Rose Project
is a research and outreach initiative at the University of Oxford
telling the story of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group in the
UK. It currently works in collaboration with the Munich-based Weiße Rose Stiftung,
whose mission is to uphold the resistance group’s memory and ‘to
contribute to civic courage and individual responsibility and to promote
democratic consciousness’.
The White Rose Project Writing Competition. Prize:£100. The winning essay will also be featured on the White Rose Project website.
Find out about the White Rose resistance group (die Weiße Rose) and write an essay in German (max. 350 words): „Was können wir heute noch von der Weißen Rose lernen?“
For undergraduates (second year and above) and postgraduates of German studying at a British or Irish university. Prize: £100. The winning translation will also be featured on the White Rose Project website.
Writing Resistance – ‘Flugblattentwurf von Christoph Probst’ (1943)
(Please download the draft of the leaflet here.)
Each submission should consist of two parts:
Produce
a translation into English of the draft leaflet written by Christoph
Probst in January 1943. Had it been completed and printed, it would have
been the seventh leaflet produced by the White Rose group.
Write a commentary on the text (max. 400 words), in English or German,
referring both to the leaflet itself (its style and historical references) and your approach to translating it.
The
competition will be judged by members of The White Rose Project. The
judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Task 4: Camden House Book Proposal Competition open to postgraduates and early-career researchers at a UK or Irish university Prize: £250 and consideration for publication with Camden House.
Task:
Submit a book proposal for a book that would fit the profile established by Camden House in German studies. In association with Camden House.
If you have any questions about the Olympiad, please contact the coordinator at olympiad@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. We hope to see lots of entries to both rounds of the German Olympiad. And to all the Germanists out there – viel Glück!
The Oxford German Olympiad 2020 launched on 26 September 2019, the European Day of Languages! The topic is NATUR UND TECHNIK (Nature and Technology). There are tasks for learners of German in Year 5 to Year 13, tasks for group entries, and even some tasks for complete beginners. The deadline for entries is noon on Friday 13 March 2020. You can find the full competition and submission guidelines here. Read on to see an outline of this year’s tasks…
Years 5 and 6 (age 9-11):
Design a robot and label its parts, and write what it can do.
Draw a picture of your home city, town or village from a Vogelperspektive – bird’s eye view. Label the things the bird is most interested in.
You’re going to set up a community on Mars – draw your spaceship and the fifteen most important things to take, and label them.
Years 7 to 9 (age 11-14):
Create a poster explaining Klimawandel.
Find out about Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman. What technical invention would he choose to take back to his community if he could time-travel? Draw Ötzi with a speech bubble explaining his choice, and illustrate and describe the invention.
Create a blogpost on a topic of your choice, with 3-5 photos taken by yourself, for a German-language online conservation magazine.
Years 10 and 11 (age 14-16):
“Ein Tag ohne Technik” – Write a story or create a video or website on this theme.
Paint or draw a landscape in the style of Caspar David Friedrich and write about the work of art that inspired it.
“Machen wir unsere Erde unbewohnbar?” Write a dialogue between two people who disagree about the answer.
Years 12 and 13 (age 16-18):
“Klimawandel – was können Jugendliche tun?” Plan a conference for 16-18 year olds including the advertisement and programme with keynote lectures and topics for roundtable discussion.
“Vorsprung durch Technik – Rückschritt für die Natur?” Write a blogpost or create a video with this title.
Record yourself giving a presentation on “Fahrerloser Verkehr – Utopie oder künftige Wirklichkeit?” or “Techno-Pop – Typisch deutsch?” .
Open Competition for Groups or Classes (4+ participants)
Create a film or PowerPoint presentation with the title “Amazonas in Gefahr”.
Write and illustrate a short book for children about a migrating bird.
“Ein Roboter in der Schule!” – Create a video or song about a robot designed for helping with practical tasks in your school.
Discover German – Taster Competition (1-3 participants with no prior experience of studying German)
Years 7 to 9: Find 10 inventions from German-speaking countries and the German word for each invention. Film yourself saying the German and the English word for each of your 10 examples.
Years 10 and 11: Rewrite (in English) the Grimm Brothers’ story of “The Frog Prince” (Der Froschkönig) with the title “The Robot Prince”, setting it in a real modern German-speaking city and including 15 German compound nouns (like Frosch+König).
Years 12 and 13: Write a blogpost on the topic “Will machine translation make human translators obsolete?” and support your argument with examples from German.
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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