Language Perfect World Championships

In Term Two, Year 7 and 8 Language classes were entered into the Language Perfect World Championships (300 000 competitors worldwide). Language Perfect is an online educational application that promotes the learning of many different languages. It offers a fun alternative in learning vocabulary and grammar. The application assists students in deepening their knowledge of the language they are studying and other languages in which they may have an interest.

Newington’s overall performance in the competition was outstanding:

• 39th overall globally out of 1152 schools (67th out of 1054 in 2013)
• 25th in Australia
• 8th in New South Wales (15th in 2013)
• 28th in the world in French
• 11th in the world in Greek
• 6th in the world in Maori

In total, the College received over 140 awards!

Credit – 73 awards Bronze – 42 awards

Silver (top 5 percent in the world) – 8 awards (4 in 2013)

• Clancy Barrett (7/JN)
• Ben Leung (7/KL)
• Rory Olsson (7/ME)
• Charlie Timpson (7/JN)
• James Triantafilis (7/MA)
• Jack Walker (7/KL)
• Andrew Xie (7/PR)

Gold – (top 2 percent in the world) 19 awards (6 in 2013)

• Angus Beer (7/ME)
• Myles Burke (7/KL)
• Sam Burkitt (7/FL)
• Joshua Cappello (7/LE)
• Nicholas Condon (7/FL)
• Mark Elwaw (7/JN)
• William Hobbins (7/MA)
• Finn Hoegh-Guldberg (7/MO)
• Joshua Hovilai (7/JN)
• Neil Khatri (7/PR)
• Jonathan Lee (7/FL)
• Nicholas Malakonakis (7/ME)
• Perry May (7/MO)
• Thomas Newham (7/MA)
• Miles Parhash (7/MA)
• Samuel Perivolaris (7/MO)
• Harry Rowland (7/FL)
• Christopher Spiropoulos (7/ME)
• Ricky Zheng (7/MO)

Special mention to Joshua Hovilai (7/JN) (5900 points) and Nicholas Condon (7/FL) (5693 points) who were the highest achievers in the competition. Both boys won Penny Skateboards for their efforts.

Perry May (7/MO) was also a lucky winner in the Language Perfect draw and received an iPod mini. Congratulations!!

Languages Poetry Evening

The Languages Poetry Finals Evening was held on Thursday 31 July in a number of venues around the school. It gave boys the opportunity to showcase their talent by reciting poetry in Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Spanish, and for the first time, Modern Greek. The students who achieved first place in each category were presented with an iTunes gift card on the evening.

Special mention should be given to Jack Alscher (8/FL) and Jack Crawford (9/KL) who were placed first in both French and Latin, an amazing achievement.

The same boys were presented at assembly on Wednesday August 13, with four students reciting their winning poems. The calibre of this year’s finalists was extraordinary and I would like to thank the Language Staff and parents for their support in this competition.

The aim of  learning a poem provides boys with a challenge, an extension task that takes them often into unfamiliar territory, but at the same time provides students with a real sense of achievement.

The winners of the 2014 Languages Poetry Competition are:

Year 7

• Chinese – Harry Janson (7/PR)
• French – Sam Boland (7/LE)
• Latin – Jonathan Lee (7/FL)

Year 8

• Chinese –  Jacob Lawler (8/ME)
• French – Jack Alscher (8/FL)
• Latin – Jack Alscher (8/FL)

Year 9

• French – Jack Crawford (9/KL)
• Japanese – Mitchell Loveridge (9/MA)
• Latin Jack – Crawford (9/KL)

Year 10

• French – Jeremi Campese (10/MA)
• Japanese – Liam Kelly (10/PR)
• Latin Eric – Sheng (10/ME)

Year 11

• French – Jean-Luc Gallo (11/MO)
• Italian – Fergus McKenna (11/JN)
• Japanese – Sean Park (11/ME)
• Latin – Saahil Parekh (11/MO)
• Modern Greek – James Gatsos (11/ME)
• Spanish – Daniel Evans (11/MA)

Mr Michael Bennett
Head of Languages