Great leaders make great speeches and great speeches can change the world. This summer, students studying Get Ahead Speech Writing learnt about the language and structure of speeches. They practised writing their own small speeches. However, more, much more was to follow. Next step on our intensive course was to make a speech that would make a difference in the real world.

The students learnt about the situation of refugees escaping from the war in Syria. When they had watched a clip from a documentary about the terrible situation that child refugees are facing, our students wanted to do something.

Working together in an international team, Maria (Mexico), Maria (UK), Weronika (Poland), Marta (Ukraine) and Zvonimir (Croatia) wrote a speech to inform the other students at More Than English about the situation and request them to donate money so that a child refugee can benefit from the educational services that More Than English can provide.

We are extremely proud to announce that the group’s speech was very successful in persuading the students to donate very generously £260 to help another student in a much worse situation.

Congratulations to the speech making group on writing and delivering a very powerful speech. Congratulations to all the students for being so generous.

In the coming weeks and months on this blog we will keep you up to date with how the money will be used to help a child refugee. For now, please watch the speech, and please contact us if you would like to help a child refugee too.

This blog is written by David Meddows, Course Leader on the Leadership programme and owner of More Than English

In this blog, Zvonimir from Croatia writes about Get Ahead Speech Making

This Get Ahead option will indeed get you ahead. Whether the audience is your class or the whole world, your speech could be a game changer.

Having no knowledge about speech making, we started analyzing one of the world’s most popular speeches, Obama’s acceptance speech. The first time we listened to it, all we could say was that it was good. As time passed, we learned a lot of complex techniques that Obama used in his speech. Elevated language, repetition and the magic rule of three are just a few examples.

Now that we were much more educated about writing speeches, it was time to write our own. What could a couple of teenagers write about?

Environmental protection? The greenhouse effect? Problems in society? Maybe. But a motivating speech before our forest paintball battle? Much better! Despite talking a lot about speech making, we were still insecure. Our teacher gave us a boost of confidence by playing a speech from the movie Braveheart. It did help us!

The speech we wrote

was quite good. Actually, it was so good that it impressed our teacher! Feeling really proud of ourselves, we left the classroom, ready for new challenges ahead of us.

Francesca (15, Italy) reflects on her experience of doing Get Ahead Film 

One of many classes you can choose for the Get Ahead options is Film Making.

You have the opportunity to work with an actual film maker, who will help you to create your own little movie. I did it in the first week, and my teacher was a lovely young lady called Jenny. On the first day she explained to us some basic notions about filming, then she asked us to start thinking about a story line for our film. Once that was settled, we started thinking about the roles everyone would take on during the filming.

I got to act to act with 3 other girls and everyone got to use the camera at least once in every scene. During the experience we were helped and guided by Jenny, but we could always give our opinions and decide what to do in pretty much every shot. When we finished the filming part, the teacher edited the shots and on the last day she showed us the final result.

It was really funny and I was really proud of what we had achieved.

Can young students really start a business? Can they really offer products and services to customers? We started the business project with lots of questions.

This course was not short of excitement. In the beginning there were two companies. However, at the start of day 2, leading her team, Weronika from Poland led a take over bid and became Managing Director of both companies. That meant double the money in the bank, double the skills and double the staff, which was useful because we had lots of work to do.

We worked as a team. Lorenzo and Giacomo from Italy led by Maria from Mexico did a lot of work on our new website. Marta and Mar from Spain with help from the company director, Weronika from Poland, created a brand identity, amazing logo and the all essential business cards. Maria from the UK  and Giselle from Mexico were confident about becoming our sales representatives.

Our new company is called iVision. Our company offers translation services to local businesses in Ludlow. In particular we focus on helping companies develop a multilingual home page strategy to boost their search engine optimisation and attract more international customers. If you think that sounds complicated, imagine how much of a challenge we had explaining that in sales pitches to local companies! Luckily, we practised first, and with each pitch we got more confident, more fluent and more persuasive.

The sales pitches were tough. Sometimes people said “no” straightaway.  What we learnt was the importance of resilience. We  also learnt how important it is to speak with the decision maker. We learnt to take different approaches for different customers. Sometimes face to face cold calling worked best. Sometimes, using polite formal phrases, we wrote emails introducing our services and then followed these up with calls.

In 9 hours we had started a company and got our first order. We celebrated by going for a pizza at a restaurant in Ludlow. Not only that, but with our website established and with contacts and staff in 14 countries, we are going to continue the business after our course at More Than English finishes. Were we happy with what we had achieved? Well wouldn’t you be? We know we’ve achieved a lot in a short space of time. We’ve gained practical skills and we have gained confidence. Whether or not our business continues to succeed, we’ve learnt skills that could be very useful in the future!

I've got butterflies in my stomach  = (I feel nervous)

It’s normal to feel nervous before you arrive on summer school. In this blog, Carolina (14) from Mexico, tells us about how she met the challenge of travelling to a new country and overcame her butterflies.

When I arrived at More Than English coming from a long way from Mexico, I really tired, but it was amazing the paradise I saw here and all the good things about England. It was great to meet for the first time a lot of people from other countries and to know things about them.

What we did everyday was have breakfast, then Core English, lunch, Get Ahead, Club Time and then Evening Activities. At first I felt nervous, thinking “what am I doing here?” but I started to have a great time from the 2nd day onward.

For me this was a great experience that I wouldn’t change and it was  an amazing opportunity for me. All the things I did here were unique and amazing. I loved the trips, all the people, the activities and all.

Our day out in London by Giselle (14, Mexico) 

Today I want to talk about one of the best places I have ever seen and experienced: London.

We woke up really early. We had breakfast on the bus and on the road there was a lot of traffic so we got a bit delayed. When we arrived we walked to London Bridge we took a tourist boat down the River Thames  (I have to say that one of my biggest dreams was to visit London). I know a lot of places, but when I saw the London Eye, I was shocked. It was so big and beautiful, and Big Ben: I have never seen anything like that in my whole life.

And what happened next? Well, we walked a lot, but we didn’t buy a lot. I loved the walk to Covent Garden down Whitehall, through Trafalgar Square because I saw a lot. You have to go there to take photos of everything.

When we were in Covenant Garden the staff just gave us an hour and a half for shopping and I was thinking, OMG, that’s not enough time. I need more time, please give me more time! I started running everywhere and with my friends came back to the meeting point just on time. Guess what? They gave us more time, so we ran again and I went to ZARA!

Then, we got back on the bus and had a very nice sleep return trip to the campus.

It all started with 3 girls: an Italian, a Latvian and me (Imogen), the plain English one. Alina, Francesca and I get on exceedingly well. We share musical tastes, food interests and are all open minded. Also, we’re a bit mad! I started singing “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” by Panic at the disco, and that’s when Francesca started joining in and then Alina. It was great and we formed a connection. That was week 1 and now we are the Sheep squad. Three nationalities, one common language and connections that will last a lifetime.

The Birmingham excursion led us to buy 3 MATCHING SHEEP ONESIES! A trip to Blue Banana meant band merchandise, ear stretchers and hair dye, which made us the punk squad of the More Than English summer. The onesies, together with Josh’s new speaker meant the ultimate party at dinner that night! “I Write Sins” playing again and the onesies led to the formation of the Head Banging Sheep (a band like no other). That night, dinner consisted of delicious food and something extra: Head Banging Sheep featuring Laura (the girls’ Senior House Parent).

Thanks for the memories HBS (Head Banging Sheep). One thing’s for sure: we definitely were insanely good!

Imogen (16) – UK

Let’s get creative! Veronika  (12) from the Czech Republic went for a walk around the campus and wrote this amazing poem using all of her senses:

I can see the beautiful forest

I can smell the lovely flowers

I can hear singing birds

I can taste delicious blueberries

I can feel the soft grass

Very effective Veronika! It’s easy to imagine this place after reading your poem. Thank you!

Congratulations to More Than English student Weronika Slomka for getting first prize in a competition for Young Learners in her region of Poland.

The competition tested students’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills. In the first stage there were 400 students. In the final stage 50 finalists competed to get the first prize.

It is wonderful to have ambitious and hard working students like Weronika on summer school. We are delighted that Weronika and her younger sister, who study at a music specialist school in Radom (Zespo?u Szkó? Muzycznych w Radomiu)  are coming back to More Than English summer school this year: this time not for 2 weeks, but for 3 weeks.

“We are made of such stuff / As Dreams are made of.”

It’s 400 years to the day since William Shakespeare died. 400 years later his plays are shown more than those of any other writer. 400 years later, children around the world still study his plays and poetry. How can this be and what are the benefits for students of studying Shakespeare on summer school?

The most important why students studying English as a foreign language should study Shakespeare is motivation. We don’t learn foreign languages because we want to learn a code. We learn foreign languages because we want to communicate, We want to share ideas. We want to understand the world better and we want to understand ourselves.

The reason that Shakespeare is still so popular now is that he tells us so much about ourselves and about the world. Romeo and Juliet tells us about love and discrimination. Macbeth tells us about ambition, guilt and power. A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes us question what is real, and what is not. Teenagers are people asking questions and seeking answers. That’s why, when they discover Shakespeare, they find a reason to speak, a reason to communicate.

When we guide our students through a Shakespeare play we take them on a journey. We guide the students and they make discoveries. Nothing in life is black or white and Shakespeare’s plays reflect this. First Shakespeare leads us to believe one thing. Then he leads us to believe the opposite. Very often, Shakespeare leads us to believe two opposite ideas at the same time. Searching for clues, finding evidence, making arguments: all this tests students’ thinking skills and improves their ability to create evidence based arguments.

Many people think that studying Shakespeare is difficult. In fact, this is not true. Students with A1 can start to study Shakespeare and, with the correct teaching methods, students with B2 can study a complete play very easily. When Shakespeare wrote he did not create stories just for the most educated people. He wrote for everybody. That is why, at the end of each speech, there is always a line that is very simple and contains the main idea. With a little work from us the audience, Shakespeare guides us to discover our own way through complex ideas.

At More Than English, what we love about teaching Shakespeare is watching students become more and more enthusiastic. On the first lesson they are a little bit nervous about the challenge they have taken on. However, very quickly, we see the magic of language take them over. The students debate, and discuss and write amazing essays. After a short while they completely enter the world of the play and we cannot stop them feeling the power of the story and discussing the ideas all of the time: including from the tops of mountains!

By the end of the programme, the students feel amazed by what they have achieved. They feel exhausted and exhilarated by the intensity of their discussions. They go back to their country knowing that there is no limit to what they can do with their English. Shakespeare gives our students knowledge of how the world works, better thinking skills, motivation, confidence and belief in themselves to do more. As Shakespeare said: “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

Click here to find out about our excursion trip to William Shakespeare’s birthplace: Stratford-upon-Avon.