Vocab Express ‘League of Champions’ Competition

Our school have been participating in the international Vocab Express ‘League of Champions’ from Wednesday 11th to Tuesday 17th November with a record 358 of our pupils have taken part in the competition. All MFL pupils were given a login to Vocab Express, a vocabulary learning platform covering all of the essential words and phrases they would be expected to learn at both KS3 and KS4.

Vocab Express holds a week-long competition allowing schools from around the country – and indeed the world – to pit their wits against each other. There are two competitions which allow pupils to compete against each other: The Genius Cup – totalling the results of the top 25 pupils in each school and comparing the results; and the Challenge Cup which totals the results of all pupils. This year, for the first time, we were entered into the ‘Grande’ competition for the biggest competing schools.

We have once again used the ‘Global Challenge’ to hold an Inter-House competition with prizes and bonus house points for the top performing pupils in each year group, and also for the overall top-performing house, using the ‘Genius Cup’ system to equate for the differing numbers in the houses.

Many pupils spent their own time online on their phones and tablets before and after school. Some classes were also facilitated to give pupils the opportunity to participate during MFL lesson time.

When the final results were calculated, after leading all the way, Arrowsmith were pipped at the post by Clitherow. Mr Whittle’s house won with 191,690 points, beating Mr Chester’s Arrowsmith who amassed 189,245. Haydock, previously the 100% winners of this event, were a distant third with 96,365. However, whilst they were missing some of the really big scorers, Mr Warham’s house had the most pupils scoring 1000 points or more.

There was a new overall winner as Eshal Malik in Year 8 gained the overall title with an incredible 56,450 points, with classmate Salahideen Alswahili finishing as runner-up with an exceptional 51,110. The bronze medal position was hotly contested with Ellie Taylor in Year 10 finally winning out, scoring an impressive 36,425. Year 7’s competition was won by Zuzanna Sankowska with a brilliant 30,095, while a very hard-fought Year 9 competition went the way of Ruby Richardson who amassed 31,555. Finally, Shea Hughes kept up his excellent record with victory in Year 11, 35,880 taking him over the finish line first.

As a whole, the school finished sixth in both the Genius Cup and Challenge Cup, which is very encouraging. From not in the top twenty this time last year, and then eighth in March, this shows really positive progress. The school also enjoyed success in several languages, finishing 1st in Arabic and Polish, 2nd in German, 3rd in Urdu and 4th in Italian. It was pleasing to see points being scored in every single language which the competition offered, including French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Hebrew and Latin.

Final competition statistics:

• 358 pupils in our school have taken part in this competition, representing 52% of our school community. However, the engagement level is significantly higher when you consider the number of pupils in our school who do not study an MFL. Approximately 510 of our pupils study an MFL and so around 70% of pupils who are able to do so have engaged with this competition. This is a new record for the school, beating the 316 pupils who took part last October.
• Our top 25 pupils – or ‘Geniuses’ – amassed 403,175 points, a huge increase from March’s 247,605 points, and this comes out to an average of 16,127 points per pupil. That would mean that since last Wednesday, these pupils have successfully completed approximately 270 blocks of vocabulary on average – each.

• 62 pupils scored in excess of 1000 points, with 36 in excess of 2000, and 16 pupils scoring 5000 points or more. Ten pupils scored in excess of 10,000 which is exceptional! These are all higher than both of the last two iterations of this competition.
   
• All 358 pupils together in all languages scored 542,540 scored an average of 1515 points each. That means on average each pupil completed around 25 units of vocabulary over the week. A fantastic team effort from everyone!