Winning pupil to make French connection on island
SPENDING two weeks on a tropical island in the South Pacific sounds like a great prize for winning a national French language speech competition.
But for Abby Bowmar, it will be far from a holiday.
The 15yearold Columba College pupil recently won the New Zealand Concours Oral French competition, and has received a trip to New Caledonia as part of the prize.
‘‘It’s a little bit intimidating. ‘‘English is not the predominant language there.
‘‘My French will need to be pretty good if I want to eat good food or find out where a bathroom is,’’ she joked.
‘‘It won’t be all sunbathing on sandy beaches. There will be a lot of learning going on all the time.
‘‘It’ll be quite exhausting, but fun and exciting.’’
While there, she will stay with a host family and will be totally immersed in the culture and language.
Abby’s skill in French is such that she is studying NCEA level 2 French when she should be studying level 1.
As a result, the year 11 pupil competed against year 12 pupils in the competition.
Earlier in the year, she won the Otago regional competition which involved introducing herself in French, giving a short speech in French and then having a conversation in French.
Her presentations were recorded and sent to a national panel of judges, who compared her skill with others around the country before naming her the year 12 national winner.
‘‘When I received the email, it was right in the middle of my mock exams for NCEA.
‘‘I was just about to go into my history exam, so I was really excited and it was hard to concentrate on the exam or appreciate the award.’’
Abby plans to take the trip to New Caledonia over the summer holidays.