Buon pomeriggio tutti! Bonjour à toutes et à tous! Mina san, konnichi wa.
The Languages Learning Area staff welcome all Languages students to 2025. We look forward to an exciting year of learning that will enable our students to further improve their Italian, French and Japanese skills. It will be an exciting year ahead of learning and interacting with the languages through various activities. One of these will be the upcoming Italian Tour in April (see the separate article for details). We wish the group a safe and rewarding trip. We look forward to hearing about the tour upon their return in early Term 2. We will also update you in future Newsletters about other exciting events that will occur in 2025.
We would like to especially welcome our Year 7 Languages students. They have spent the first few weeks at OLMC beginning their journey of learning one of the languages, whether it is learning how to greet each other in the second language or learning about the culture and geography of that country. In French and Italian, the girls have been conversing through speaking activities such as ‘speed dating’ and in Japanese the students have learnt basic greetings and begun to learn the Hiragana writing script. Here are some thoughts from our Year 7 language students:
‘Learning Italian at OLMC is engaging because it is interesting and fun and we get to play games, like Kahoot and Blookit.’
Zara D 7C, Gen D 7C, Samreen E 7H and Vivian D 7H
‘French has been très bien as they say. We have been learning introductions and greetings. I have enjoyed the little conversations we have been having.’
Shamalka K 7C
‘In Japanese I have really enjoyed learning the new writing script called Hiragana. It is something completely different and it’s lots of fun to learn.’
Zoe D 7G
Finally, we would like to wish our Year 12 cohort of Languages students the best of luck as they begin their final year of language study at OLMC. Over the coming weeks they will begin to attend language conversation practice sessions with their respective conversation tutors. These sessions, that run out of the normal lesson times, enable our students to improve their speaking skills as they prepare for oral assessments that will occur throughout the year and the end-of-year external oral exam.
In Bocca Al Lupo! Bonne Chance! Ganbatte!
James Stavretis
Languages Learning Leader
Italy Study Tour
Italian students from Years 10-12 will be heading on a nearly three-week immersion into Italian language and culture over the April holidays. After a week at the Monash campus in Prato where our students will attend Italian classes, we head north to Verona, Venezia, Le Cinque Terre, Firenze, and Roma. We are especially looking forward to participating in cooking demonstrations, visiting a textile museum and the the Baci factory. We are also looking forward to spending a special Easter together.
Anita Galli
Italian Teacher
‘I am excited to experience and have the opportunity to interact with the Italian culture and use the language I have learnt in a real-life scenario, such as in cafes and when we visit the local high school, as it will help me further improve my Italian skills.’
Ayesha B 12A1
