Stellar Spanish skills see Abbey scoop prize
Abbey Peters finds Spanish easier than English, so it’s little wonder that the Tuakau College student scooped third place in the Language Perfect Spanish World Championships.
Competing against 300,000 others from around the world, the year 11 pupil said she was hoping to place - but was surprised at the final result.
‘‘10 minutes after [the competition closed] I looked at the leader board and I was third. I was quite surprised. I called out to my mum.’’
The online competition was open for 10 days.
‘‘It’s online so you log in wherever you want,’’ Abbey said.
‘‘All year 11 to year 13 pupils learning Spanish here are automatically entered.’’
‘‘There’s four modes including translating written Spanish to written English and spoken Spanish to written English.’’
Abbey has been learning Spanish for three years, after randomly selecting the subject in year 9.
‘‘In year 9 there aren’t many options so I just picked it and, once I started learning it, I really enjoyed it.’’
Tuakau College’s Spanish teacher Michelle McMillan said Abbey was a determined student.
‘‘She couldn’t wait for the competition to start. She had pure determination to get it done and do the best she could. She’s done that with all her Spanish work.’’
Abbey said Spanish made more sense to her than English and she encouraged anyone to give the language a go.
‘‘There aren’t as many exceptions and stuff. Go for it - whenever you can - just learn a little bit more and improve every day.’’
Fellow Tuakau College student Amy Cho made the top 50 and took away an elite award in the competition.
Abbey’s prize was a $20 iTunes voucher, medals and a certificate.
Education Perfect for Languages (Language Perfect) is a popular online language learning resource used by more than 1,000 schools around the world.
Students have answered more than one billion questions over the past few years.