To celebrate European Day of Languages this year, the Modern Languages department invited the best kind of role model they could think up to come and speak to pupils. Hyperpolyglot Richard Simcott, often referred to as the ‘Ambassador for Multilingualism’ was flown over from Macedonia to spend a couple of days in the department. Richard, who is originally from Chester, and who previously worked for the Foreign Office, has studied 40 languages and uses over 20 of them on a weekly basis in his personal life, as well as his work.
Richard began with a debate with the language teachers about his ideas of how to motivate language learners. On Friday evening he gave a Society talk to Sixth Formers and then on Saturday led a series of polyglot workshops and talks. Around 700 pupils came into contact with him. The crowd that gathered around him a break quizzing him about the languages he could speak was proof of the impact he had and his almost ‘celebrity’ status.
My favourite moment was when the Third Form asked him questions in Dutch, Russian, Mandarin, Thai, French, Spanish, Italian and sign language, and then requested that he spoke French in a scouse accent. None of this fazed him!
So what is his secret? Richard says the key is finding your motivation for learning the language of your choice. Once you have done this, it is all about making your language learning part of your every day life and daily routine. If you have another hobby that you can further in that language, all the better.
‘Over-learn it’, he said. ‘Expose yourself to that language in both an active and passive way as you did as a child when you were learning your first language.’
However my favourite quote of the weekend was, ‘If you are blind, you don’t know what it’s like to see. If you’re deaf, you don’t know what it’s like to hear. If you are a monoglot, you see the world in black and white and you don’t know what it’s like to see the colour of the world.’
S Davidson