The Other Tongue competition

Supplementary guidelines and information for Other Tongue entries

• Teachers may issue appropriate support materials to help learners write their poems just as they normally would in writing activities.

• It is acceptable for a similar approach to be used in a number of poems entered by the same centre, but efforts should be made to ensure poems represent learners' own work.

• It is acceptable to use approaches that draw from published materials like novels, poems, films, adverts, leaflets, newspapers, etc. provided that poems produced represent learners' own work.

• Very restricted approaches may disadvantage learners in terms of originality. 

• Teachers should encourage learners to aim for accuracy in terms of spelling, grammar, syntax, etc.

• Judges will be mindful of the fact that poems may play with language or use non-standard structures for effect. However, where it is obvious that there are errors and/or these detract from the overall effect, judges may take this into consideration.

• Learners are invited to provide a brief summary of their poem in English. This is not compulsory but it may assist the judging process to know more information about the poem/poet. This should require no more than a few sentences. The competition does not prescribe the content of these summaries but some examples may be;

• The learners reasons for choosing to write about a particular subject

• Their general feelings about the poem or the experience of writing a poem in another language

• The thinking behind their choice of words and/or use of figurative language

• Details of any materials they have drawn upon and what they thought of these

Mother Tongue Other Tongue at King's Park primary school

Primary 7 pupils at King's Park primary school, Glasgow, have kicked off their activities for the Mother Tongue Other Tongue competition with an afternoon of Scottish Book Trust Live Literature  poetry workshops. The aims of the afternoon were to build confidence, to stimulate enjoyment in reading and writing poetry and to support learners in finding and developing their own poetic voices in whichever languages they speak.

"See me, ah ken when tae tell folk tae back aff!"

In "See Me", a workshop led by poets Jill Bennet and Elizabeth Cordiner, learners were encouraged to use their knowledge of Scots to write poems about the kinds of things that drive their hopes, fears and desires. They then had the opportunity to consider, and thus extend, their understanding of poetic features such as rhythm and word choice by integrating their work successfully into a whole class poem.

Learners writing "See Me" poems about what makes them tick

Taking notes in "Windows"

In Ken Cockburn's workshop, learners were encouraged to use familiar phrases from their mother tongue languages to take part in an oral game in which they created a rhythmic, whole-class spoken poem. The poet then gave a reading of the German poem, Das Fenster (The Window) by Sarah Kirsch, in German and in English, leading to a discussion about cognates and false friends. Taking the theme of windows as a basis for their own poems, learners started by making notes about the kinds of objects and activities they might observe from a window. Using a template, they began to write their own poems comparing and contrasting life observed through several different windows.

We were very grateful to the eager volunteers from each group who read their work aloud to a captive audience of their classmates, teachers and poets. Feedback from learners in both workshops was very positive. On the whole, they enjoyed having the opportunity to read, write and talk about poetry and languages. 

The class is treated to a poetry reading