Member Article

North Tyneside students learn to talk the multi-lingual talk

The importance of languages in the world of work has been shown to North Tyneside students as multi-lingual business ambassadors from Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) Cobalt Business Park site spent the day helping school students to learn the lingo at a “Languages 4 Lads” event at Northumbria University.

Three P&G business ambassadors took part in the day-long event organised by North Tyneside Education Business Partnership (EBP) which was attended by 80 year 8 boys from schools across North Tyneside.

David Caisley, an accountant at P&G’s Cobalt Business Park site said: “I speak German, French and Spanish as well as English in my day-to-day work – so it’s good to be able to explain to the students that taking on languages further at school or even university can open a lot of doors for your career.”

As part of the day the students had the chance to grill the business ambassadors in a “spill the beans” quiz to give them a glimpse into how languages are used in the world of work across various businesses in the region.

Julia Cantwell, North Tyneside EBP’s development officer, coordinated the event and said: “Demand for languages from the business community in the region is growing and there is a need to encourage students, particularly boys to study languages when they become optional at GCSE – so events like this aim to show students that languages can be fun and that they can lead to a wide variety of careers. We even had taster sessions in more unusual languages, like Japanese and Polish.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .