King’s Park Secondary School

After hearing about the ‘Talk your way to Brussels competition’ through Mr.Grimes, myself (Glen Melville), Eilidh Shearer, and a few others wanting to take part were told to prepare short speeches so that it could be decided who would represent the school in the Greenock Heat.

           

After brilliant speeches from everybody, it was decided that Eilidh and myself should be the ones to be entered into the competition. We then had to write essays depicting the reasons why we should be allowed to compete.

           

A short while after this, we were told that we had to prepare a speech on why learning a European language should be important to young people and what we would do to make learning more fun that also contained a summary and vote of thanks in a European language (in our case French).

           

After hearing this, we spent many an afternoon in Mr.Grimes’s room working on our speeches or in the modern languages base with Jeanne the French assistant working on our French, whether it was the actual writing in French or the rather pressing matter of how to say what we were writing without sounding well, just plain awkward.

           

Many preparation-filled weeks later, Jeanne Billau, Mr. Grimes, Eilidh and I travelled into Greenock’s IBM building for the second of four regional heats being held around Scotland.

           

The other schools which we were competing against, were very confident and eloquent, and to us it seemed very close as to who would walk away with the all expenses paid trip to Brussels for the next stage of the competition. Fortunately, the judges rated us very highly, and after a very tense (but still very tasty) lunch, they announced that we had come first place and would be the team going forward to Brussels in February.

 

So, as a result of our preparation and the endless support of Mr. Grimes and Jeanne we shall be travelling to Brussels as one of only five teams from all around Scotland getting this marvellous opportunity.