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By Mariana, Young Interpreter at Cherrywood Community Primary School 

Hello everyone. My name is Mariana and I am ten year old. I am writing to share my experiences during the responsibility being a young interpreter for the last two years. I signed up because I like providing additional support to pupils who are learning English as an additional language.

When I was young, I went through the same thing as the pupils who I have worked with in the past terms. They did not know how to speak a lot while still needing help to join in. When I came into pre-school and Ash I did not know how to speak to people however luckily I had help from adults and even other children.

I strongly believe that I was chosen for this role because of my ability to communicate and help the other children to integrate in with their class and mates. I am also confident and do a lot of extra work around other languages.

On my first year of young interpreters all of us had special training to understand what we had to do in the different situations which might happen with Mrs Tagima, a very kind lady. Some of the things we done were playing a matching game around different countries, creating a map around us so we could learn new things around everyone and creating scenarios on situations and how we should act.

Last year I worked with a boy in year 1 which was from Nepal and this year I accepted a challenge by working with a new boy from Romania which cannot speak a lot of English.

During the role I have done lots of things which evolve:

- Helping them join into their PE lesson.

- Doing their work with them.

- Making sure that they understand.

- Helping with counting and reading.

Each year I enjoyed and had challenges to do with this role. Some of the things I found quite tricky were speaking and helping the boy because he nods but sometimes did not understand. I enjoyed quite a lot of things but here are some:

- Joining in with them.

- Helping them join in in class.

- Seeing their smiling faces.

Thinking of the book and game I made was easy. When I was in reception class my mum made a book for me to join in more.  As for the game, when I was little I had a game like that so, when I observed him in class to see what he needed, I remembered that I could make him something like that to help him.

The games and books are to boost his confidence while learning English. As for one of the games, it is used to help him with his class work. Incredibly, I made the games only with household objects. My friend (Romanian) helped me translate English to Romanian.

You play the games by matching the words and numbers to their correct pairs. The book is really just to boost his confidence (like a picture translator).

Thank you very much for reading. I strongly hope you understand why I wrote this blog.

Thank you!

Mariana on behalf of the young interpreters at Cherrywood Community Primary School

Find out more about the Young Interpreter Scheme on the Hampshire EMTAS website.

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