Welcome to Languages Week Scotland

Daily Challenges

Challenge and celebrate languages and creativity with our series of daily challenges, running throughout Languages Week Scotland. Work with your class, your teacher, your family or your friends and join in! Follow @LangsWeekScot to receive the challenge each day.

Our Multilingual Futures: Global citizenship

Monday's Challenge

Our world is now more interconnected than ever, with societies becoming increasingly culturally diverse. People around the globe face daunting global challenges, such as the effects of climate emergencies and rising sea levels. These issues can feel overwhelming, and many individuals feel powerless to combat prejudices, stereotypes, and inequalities. As a global citizen, you can make a difference for future generations to come. Let’s make a start!

  • Watch this short video about what global citizenship is and what global citizens can do: Global citizenship is… (UNESCO).
  • Think about what global citizenship means to you. What can you do as a global citizen to make the world a more sustainable, fair and peaceful place, where all languages and cultures are accepted, valued and respected?
  • Once you have thought about this, create a colourful poster, leaflet, video, poem, song or slogan about an aspect of global citizenship that means something to you. This can be done in a language you are learning at school or another language you know. You could even create a bilingual message! It’s up to you.

Share your messages with us and post it on social media using #ScotlandLovesLanguages.

Our Multilingual Futures: Skills for life and work in a global context

Tuesday's Challenge

A multilingual workforce can have many benefits for a business or organisation in Scotland. For example:

  • Improved communication
  • Better problem solving
  • Increased creativity
  • Cultural understanding
  • Global opportunities
  • Improved customer service

Have a look at some online job sites such as Indeed, Reed or Totaljobs. Search for multilingual jobs and see how many different types of jobs you can find.

Create a word cloud to show as many of them as possible!

Share what you learn! Take a photo of your work and post it on social media using #ScotlandLovesLanguages.   

Our Multilingual Futures: The multicultural society

Wednesday's Challenge - Global Munchies

Food is a great vehicle for socialising and learning about one another!

Invite your class or group to bring in snacks from different cultures for everyone to share and talk about.  Ask them to list the ingredients in English and the language linked to the culture the food comes from. Remember to check for any dietary requirements, allergies or food intolerances.

Here is a template of a letter to send out in advance of the activity.

Why not take some photos of the food and share this on social media using #ScotlandLovesLanguages?

Our Multilingual Futures: Contributing to the development of a better world

Thursday's Challenge

Have you ever thought about all the language skills that are needed to get the special treats that we love onto our supermarket shelves?

Watch this video about the journey of chocolate from bean to bar. Draw a map of the journey the chocolate takes and identify all the different languages that it encounters along the way.

If you would like to dig a little deeper into this topic and investigate the social justice issues in chocolate production, this excellent resource explores the Chocolate Trade Game. With your new-found knowledge of the languages that are used to get chocolate to your shelves, you could play this game in your language lesson and build multilingual skills along the way!

Share your work on social media using #ScotlandLovesLanguages.   

 

Our Multilingual Futures: Global influence and engagement

Friday's Challenge

Our final Languages Week Scotland challenge for 2025 highlights Scotland’s International Hubs.

Scotland has offices in key locations around the world that work to promote Scottish interests overseas and strengthen our relationships with key countries and continents. Communication is key to this work, and linguistic diversity means that more and better communication is possible.

First, for a flavour of the scope of Scotland’s global influence watch, Scotland - for the head, heart and the spirit from Brand Scotland. 

Next: Where in the world are Scotland’s international hubs located? How many can you find on a map or globe? Time for some rapid research! Visit Scotland’s International Hubs.

Scotland and all the hub locations are already multilingual places. Thanks to travel and migration, media and technology, they are all likely to become even more multilingual in the future.

Although the scale, scope and focus of Scotland’s international network varies depending on location, each of the offices are dedicated to:

  • Improving Scotland’s international profile
  • Attracting investment to Scotland
  • Helping Scottish-based businesses to trade internationally
  • Promoting and securing Scottish research and innovation capability, partnerships and funding
  • Protecting and enhancing Scotland’s interests in the EU and beyond

Your final challenge for LWS25 is to create an eye-catching multilingual visual or film clip that presents one or more of the five dedicated areas of work from the list above. In your visual or film incorporate languages that you know and use and/or are commonly used in Scotland, according to the last census, and/or are commonly used in the hub locations.

Post your creations on social media and tag #ScotlandLovesLanguages.

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