MFL Newsletter Mother Tongue Other Tongue Creative Writing Competition 2026

At Sacred Heart, our school is fortunate to be at the centre of a truly multicultural and multi-lingual community in the North-East of England.  We have almost four hundred students for whom English is an additional language to the one they or their families speak at home, and many other students whose cultural heritage plays an important part in their lives.  This diversity enriches our school life and fosters greater understanding between our communities. 

The Mother Tongue Other Tongue creative writing competition, held annually for the last six years as part of the North-East Festival of Languages, enables students to share their languages and cultures with the school community and more widely across the North- East.   

The competition is in two parts. For Mother Tongue, students need to reproduce a ‘remembered’ text in their language: this could be a poem, a song, a lullaby etc.  They then write a short paragraph in English explaining why this text is special to them, what memories it evokes and perhaps a translation. For Other Tongue, students create an original poem in a language they are studying or are interested in. 

This year, we have had entries across KS3 in eight different languages: Ijaw, Irish Gaelic, Malayalam, Tagalog, Igbo, Polish, Mandarin, Persian, Arabic, German, Korean and Spanish. This wide variety of languages from across the globe truly reflects the multicultural nature of Sacred Heart today.    

Thank you to Ellie H, Nirvana O, Ameya J, Ihuoma A, Lilly M, Olivia G, Angelica A, Lola B, Fatima K, Heidi A, Fola F, Ellen, Emmanuella and Lucy for your thought-provoking and beautifully- illustrated entries.  

All entrants received certificates and the poems have been included in the Digital Anthology, which also includes entries from all over the region.  This can be viewed here: https://read.bookcreator.com/aPFdJwL6yBQL1EtOM2cNOfHB3nD3/HQy-Q2PiS_uV_DY_fFE4XQ