Abu Dhabi school makes top ten in global languages competition

Bright sparks at an Abu Dhabi school are feeling on top of the world - after being ranked among the globe's best in an international languages competition.

The British International School Abu Dhabi placed an impressive 10th out of 2,459 schools in the Language Perfect World Championships.

The challenging competition, organised by  Education Perfect, an online platform that helps pupils learn languages through games which they can play, saw students from across the world scored on vocabulary, language and success.

BISAD was the only school in the UAE to crack the top 50 of the overall competition - and there was plenty of success in the individual language subjects, too.

The Kindergarten Starters were world beaters in Arabic, with BISAD in second place, ahead of Gems   New Millenium School in Al Khail in fourth and Cambridge International School Dubai in seventh.

GEMS New Millenium School in Al Khail also placed 10th globally in French.

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Eric Depose, head of languages at BISAD said making pupils compete through language-based games helped them on to improve performance.

“Children find it fun to play and because it’s a game, they get involved in it. For example, they make lists of vocabulary and they score points for this. Many of our pupils were keen to play in the Arabic section," said Mr Depose.

Pupils between the ages of 10 and 15 participated in the world-wide assessments.

Patrick Horne, principal at The British International School Abu Dhabi said that languages are given high priority at the school.

"We do have innovative practices in the way we run the lessons, extra-curricular activities and competitions," he added.

The school teaches more than 10 languages including Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Latin and Malay and scored highly in many subjects.

“What happens is that when you have all these pupils excited and inspired, they get competitive. They drive each other on,” said Mr Horne.

“Now we know how well they are doing internationally. We have pupils from 80 nationalities in our school. It’s not just the learning of languages, it’s also understanding the international and global culture in the world today,” believes Mr Horne.