Industry News
School boy who speaks 11 languages
Posted on 30th October 2007
A private-school boy of ten has made it to the final of a national language contest for the second year running thanks to his ability to speak 11 languages.
Arpan Sharma from the Blue Coat School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, learnt Hindi from his parents and Italian, German, Spanish and French at school.
He then went on to teach himself Thai, Swahili, Mandarin and Polish and is currently teaching himself Lugandan – Uganda's language.
"Learning Swahili was probably one of the biggest challenges I've faced and Mandarin Chinese was hard too. But the teachers have been really helpful," he told the Daily Telegraph.
Blue Coat school was the first primary in its region to offer pupils lessons in Chinese.
Earlier this year online resource Teaching Expertise warned there had been a sharp fall in the numbers of pupils studying a foreign language. It reported the biggest decline had been seen in state comprehensives.
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