WhyNotLang@Cam

21:45 Leila Gunn 2 Comments

Today the Cambridge Language Centre ran a 'WhyNotLang@Cam' workshop, which was really insightful. The language seminars and tasters were structured around giving us an insight into the opportunities available when studying languages at university. We even had the opportunity to start learning another foreign language from scratch! (I tried Russian... and found Cyrillic utterly incomprehensible.)



The day also really made me think about the importance of learning languages as a whole. I've always loved learning languages, and study Spanish at A-level. I have often been questioned about this decision and met with (pretty ignorant) replies such as; 'What's the point? Everybody speaks English.' This frustrates me; not only because it's untrue, but also because I don't understand why there always has to be a 'point' to learning? What is the 'point'? To get the top grades? To get into the 'best' university? To get the 'best' job? I think we often get too caught up in our desire to succeed academically and 'better our life chances.' Of course it's great to aspire to be successful, but this often results in people losing that which is fundamental to learning - being passionate.

This word was referred to frequently in today's seminars, as learning a new language does require you to be passionate - you have to want to learn a language in order to be able to speak it. Unfortunately, a lack of passion towards learning languages means that many people in the UK remain monolingual. This, in my opinion, can only be a hindrance. Without learning foreign languages, we are unable to communicate with others and see things from their point of view/culture.

"A different language is a different vision of life" - Federico Fellini

Jocelyn Wyburd (Director of the University of Cambridge Language Centre) organised the workshop today, and delivered some facts and figures in her welcome speech which I found particularly surprising. For example, that 75 % of the world's population do not speak English and only 5 % of the world's population speak English as a first language. She then asked a question which I had never thought about before - even if people can speak English, why should they do so for us? And the truth is, people don't always speak English, which can create huge problems. Our language deficit costs the British Economy £70 billion a year, as a result of the UK's inability to communicate with those who speak in a different tongue to our own. This puts us at a massive disadvantage economically, which could be easily remedied, if only more people studied foreign languages.

Last year, the Government announced a change to the curriculum, introducing 'compulsory learning of foreign languages' for primary school children. This in turn, should improve the number of children continuing to study languages into Secondary Education, which I fully support. If taught correctly (i.e. in a fun and interesting way), languages can be fantastic in encouraging children to become more engaged in their learning. As a result, this provides children with a cross-cultural understanding, improves communication skills and aids employability in the future. Therefore, learning languages is not only personally enriching but beneficial for the economy too... a win-win right?

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart." - Nelson Mandela

Languages provide us with the ability to move between different worlds of meaning, however perseverance is key. It's clear that in almost all languages, not only one word can apply to one object/meaning. An example given by Dr Vivien Kogut-Lessa-De-Sá today was that of the word for 'Camel' in Arabic, for which there are 5,074 words. This of course creates difficulties in translation. Although in our technologically-advanced society it is easy to look up words instantly using online dictionaries, whatever we gain in time we usually lose in meaning and understanding. In my opinion, one of the main reasons for the lack of young people continuing language study into Secondary education is that it's easier to give up than to graft - people often become frustrated and disinterested by that which they don't understand. Dr Viviene emphasised the importance of perseverance using the metaphor of a dark room. Although it may seem like you are standing in a dark room when beginning to learn a new language, the longer you persevere, the clearer things become.

Nevertheless, the thing that resonates the most with me after attending the 'WhyNotLang@Cam' workshop is how lucky I am to have the opportunity to learn foreign languages. Young people (myself included) often do take this for granted, and there are so many free online language teaching websites available to us. So if you've ever thought about learning a new language, give it a go! Yes it's difficult at first, yes it's time-consuming, but the benefits are well worth it.

Leila

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Be fearless

23:48 Leila Gunn 0 Comments

This year my family thought we'd do something a little different for Father's day, so we decided to go to Arena Essex Raceway to watch the Banger Racing. For those of you who haven't heard of Banger Racing before, it's a motorsport which I would describe as a grown man's version of bumper cars. It basically involves driving scrap cars around a track at high-speed and regularly smashing into others. I admit that I may have over-generalised slightly - there are rules in Banger Racing, it's just that nobody really understands them. Nevertheless, it's a brilliant event which is suitable for the whole family to watch. The excitement of watching cars spin, crash and set on fire never quite wears thin...
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I hadn't planned to write a post about our trip to Arena Essex, but watching the Demolition Derby event earlier today really got me thinking. This event features drivers trying to completely destroy their competitors, crashing into the opposition in order to immobilise them, so that the last vehicle standing (or running) wins. Even the drivers who had to evacuate their flaming vehicles emerged with grins on their faces and looked like they were having the time of their lives, yet I found myself questioning why they'd want to take part in the first place. To me, although I enjoy watching Banger Racing, the thought of doing it myself is terrifying. Why would you want to take part in an activity where it is almost certain that you will suffer some kind of physical injury? I then thought about this a little more and realised how hypocritical I was being... I ride horses - unpredictable animals which weigh over 400kg and could easily kill me if I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but why doesn't that scare me?

When you're doing something you love, you don't think about the risks and dangers, because you're so immersed in that activity that it almost becomes second nature. I would never compete in Banger Racing, because the thought of getting hurt overrides any desire I have to race. Similarly, I would never jump out of a plane, because my fear of falling overrides my desire to view the Earth from the clouds. Fear prevents me from doing some of the activities which a large number of people have on their bucket lists, which I hate. Sometimes I wish I was a little kid again; jumping off of things that were far too high, running as fast as my legs could carry me, without a care in the world that I was more than likely to trip over my laces and scrape my knees on the pavement. When you're a child you're pretty much fearless, you have no reason to be otherwise.

I don't want to be scared of roller coasters, I don't want to be scared of a scuba-diving mask controlling my breathing. I want to be fearless, as fearless as the Banger racers, but I don't know how to be. And I think that's half the problem; there is no formula which you can follow to conquer fear - you just have to take risks and hope for the best. Of course that's easier said than done (and I'm certainly no psychological expert!) but I do believe that the only way to ever feel adrenaline and the buzz which follows it is to do something outside of your comfort zone. So perhaps I should take my own (slightly questionable and underdeveloped) advice, and dare I say it encourage you to do the same. Do something which makes you feel uncomfortable, regularly, because only by doing this will you learn if you should ever do it again.

Leila

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My day at Sky

23:10 Leila Gunn 1 Comments

As promised yesterday, here is a post about my experience of the Journalism Insight day at Sky - [spoiler] it didn't disappoint! A lot was crammed into the day, giving a real representation of what the life of a journalist truly entails. As a result, I have an awful lot to write about, so prepare yourself for a marathon post!

The day was held at Sky in Osterley. This is quite a distance from Southend, therefore I was certain that I needed to get on a train at 6:00AM in order to be at Sky by 9:45 AM (leaving sufficient time for getting lost of course.) In hindsight, barely able to keep my eyes open as I write this post, I realise how wrong I was about this. I arrived at Sky a whole 1 hour and 20 minutes early, on completely the wrong side of the building. This may not sound like a big deal, unless you've visited Sky before. In that case you will understand what I'm talking about - the campus is absolutely huge!

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I was pretty lost and (looked it apparently) as a nice and very funny man called Daud (a security gate officer and soon-to-be lawyer) offered to help me out. The gate officers were just a couple of the friendly people I had the pleasure of meeting at Sky today, and from the moment I arrived I got a sense of the lively atmosphere that comes with working at one of the leading News Channels and telecommunications companies in the country.

When I finally worked out where I needed to be, I joined the group of 40 aspiring young journos. We were then led into the Careers Lab, a high-tech, swanky room where work experience events are held at Sky. Not only was the room amazing, but so was the breakfast kindly laid out for us - I've never seen so many pastries!

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We began the day with a talk from Isabel Webster, a Sky News Presenter on Sunrise (Sky's breakfast show) alongside Eamonn Holmes. It was incredibly kind of Isabel to come and speak to us, as not only had she not slept having only just returned from Canada, but she is also six months pregnant! Isabel is a real life example of what a bit of 'hard graft' and a thirst for knowledge can achieve. She has made the most of any journalistic opportunity available to her, from working at her local hospital radio station to interviewing David Beckham, Isabel has experienced all that Broadcast Journalism has to offer!

We also listened to talks by Laurie Tucker and David Miles who are both Sky Sports Editors. They ran a Sky Sports workshop, where we were instructed to brainstorm how we would cover the unforeseen (and fabricated) story that 'Arsène Wenger has been sacked.' This encouraged us to think about how we would present the story on various different platforms; using the Sky Sports website, Twitter account and Snapchat to gain real life reactions from fans. Although I'm not the biggest sports fan, I found this exercise really worthwhile. Not only did it enable us to work together as a team, but also allowed us to think about who our first ports of call would be in order to get the inside scoop of a breaking news story.

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However, I think perhaps my favourite talk of the day was delivered by Jim Cockin who is head of Internal Communications at Sky, after spending many years working as a journalist. Although Communications isn't a field I know much about, I really appreciated Jim's honesty about the highs and lows of being a journalist. Jim also delivered a line which I know I will refer to often when writing in the future -  'you can type it, but can you say it?', which is apparently similar to what Harrison Ford said to his Scriptwriter when filming Star Wars. I learnt that although it is important to be professional in practice when covering news stories, what's even more important is to communicate with the audience in a way which is Right (Accurate), Bright (lively) and Tight (concise) in order to keep the audience engaged. As Jim said, when writing, imagine each word you write is a pound off of your pay!

The day was topped off with a 'Speed networking' session with industry professionals such as Neil Dunwoodie (Sky Executive Producer) and Martin Stanford (News Presenter and Journalist for Sky News) as well as apprentices and interns at Sky who have achieved work placements through the opportunities 'Sky - Starting Out' and 'Sky Academy' regularly offer to young people. Sky even threw in a tour of the Sky News HQ, the Sky Sports HQ, the weather room (who knew the weather bulletin wasn't filmed in front of a Green Screen?!) and the Sky Studios where we came across the actual throne from "Game of Thrones"!

The Sky News Room
The Sky News Room


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The
The 'Iron Throne'

I really enjoyed the Journalism Insight Day at Sky, and I definitely feel more confident now about the next steps I should take in order to gain more work experience in the industry and to eventually become a journalist. I hope that like Isabel, with a bit of 'hard graft', I too will have the opportunity to work for Sky News one day!

1 comments:

Life at present...

17:51 Leila Gunn 1 Comments

I regret that I have already failed to achieve my goal of posting at least twice a week. However, last week was pretty rough, so I didn't really feel up to blogging.


I can't say I often post about personal issues/subjects, however I thought I should explain to those of you who spoke to me or saw me around school last week why I may have seemed a bit down. I did promise to be honest after all!


On Thursday, my family received the heart-breaking news that our beautiful Nanny had passed away. She remains the strongest, kindest and most fiercely independent lady I have ever met, and with those qualities in mind, I aspire to be more and more like her each day.


Sadly I never got to tell Nanny this (- I know she would have been very interested!), but my application has been accepted to visit Sky as part of their Starting Out - Insight into Journalism program. I'm really looking forward to it and I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures and information to share tomorrow.


Till then,


Leila

1 comments:

New girl on the blog

16:20 Leila Gunn 3 Comments

Hi, I'm Leila.

I'm new to this whole blogging business, so I apologise for the current layout of my blog - I'll watch some YouTube videos to remedy this ASAP.

Anyway, I thought I'd create a blog to document my thoughts, travels and general questions about the world. I realise that the first post is pretty important in establishing a tone for the rest of a blog, so I thought I'd use this post to tell you a little bit about myself and my reasons for blogging.

1. I'm currently 17 years old and a student studying for my A-levels.

2. I'm the eldest sibling - I have two younger brothers. I know.

Here is a photo of my brother shoving cake in my face on a recent holiday :)
Here is a photo of my brother shoving cake in my face on a recent holiday :)

3. I thought I'd call my blog 'shooting from a click' as a play on the idiom 'shooting from the hip,' as I intend to write with honesty (I'd say I'm quite opinionated...) It also just so happens that my surname is 'Gunn'... see what I did there?

4. I've been lucky enough to travel quite a lot in my 17 years, to places such as Iceland and Vietnam, so I thought a blog would be a good way of documenting any future voyages.


Mekong Delta - Vietnam
Mekong Delta - Vietnam
 

Iceland
Iceland
5. My dream is to become a journalist. I am part of various news clubs in school, so I see blogging as the perfect medium to publish my articles all in one place.

6. I'm an animal lover. I have a dog called Buster and a cat called Seraphina ('Sebbles' for short - I named her after the 'Barbie: Princess and the Pauper' film when I was 7. I also go horse-riding weekly on a Chestnut Thoroughbred mare called Flaire.

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7. I work in a sea-side cafĂ©/ice-cream parlour in England. We eat a lot of ice-cream.

8. I love photography. I am currently saving up for a new camera so I can take better, higher-quality photos - I understand from reading other blogs that photographs are very useful in accompanying blog posts. You know what they say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'.

9. And that's another thing I'll be using this blog for, quotes. There's nothing I like more than a relatable quote, but they're not all soppy and 'moody teenager-esque,' I promise.

10. My nickname is 'Lils.' I'm not quite sure why, but it might have something to do with being shorter than the majority of my friends.

11. I can unicycle thanks to my German/Polish/English best friend who kindly brought me back a unicycle from Germany a few years ago.

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12. I don't have a list of my 'Top 10 favourite films' because I don't really watch them - I find it surprisingly difficult to find the hours to sit down and watch films. However, I do love watching TV, especially documentaries such as those by Stacey Dooley (AKA my journalist idol) and I am addicted to watching 'Made in Chelsea' - it's my guilty pleasure!

13. I hate, hate, HATE chewing-gum. I cannot stand speaking to or even sitting next to someone whilst they loudly chomp on a piece of hour-old gum with their mouth open. Eurghhh. Whatever happened to manners?

I think I'll stop there before I bore you with any more of my pet peeves, but I hope I've given you a small insight into my general character/being. I've set myself a goal to write at least a couple of posts a week, so I hope you'll return to read the next!

Till then,

Leila

3 comments: