Explorathon, an annual celebration of research from ALL disciplines, took place in venues across Glasgow on Friday 20th, Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd September 2024, with events and activities for all ages. The School of Modern Languages was very well represented at the events in the ARC, which offered the opportunity to showcase our research and language teaching.

The language teaching in SMLC was showcased on Saturday 21st September via interactive Catalan, Italian and Spanish language and culture sessions delivered by staff in these languages programmes. Mónica Legazpi-Iglesias, Arabella Infantino, Emanuela Ponti, Marta Aragones Lopez, with the invaluable help of the Spanish NLTS Marina Brana Sanchez and Tomás Lopez Santiago, engaged participants of all ages with stories about figures of folklore in Catalonia, Italy and Spain.

The ARC was packed with children and families for the September weekend and language teaching staff entertained them all with table top and floor activities telling the stories linked to folklore figures and teaching basic language expressions, highlighting similarities between the three Romance languages. Participants were invited to take part in creative activities with one another and the presenters such as drawing, writing and finding missing information in the stories. They learned about folklore figures such as mermen and mermaids, dragons and elves in the folklore of the three countries and were prompted to draw comparisons and/or contrasts between these as well as reflecting on characters of the folklore in their own countries to discover similarities.

The activities were aimed also at showing that languages are for all!

Presenters were delighted with the level of engagement. The positive feedback from all participants showed that the activities were received very well and participants felt that languages are accessible to all and fun. The tables were visited by children from nursery age to teenagers, and hopefully some of them will be inspired to join SMLC as students in the future.

 

First published: 29 January 2025

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