Pupils from Fairlight Primary School were among the beneficiaries of the Le Havre Football Club (HAC) visit to Brighton last week.
HAC first team players visited the school's learning session at the Seagulls Learning Centre at Withdean, whilst their team mates also attended Hove Park School, Nevill Road, and Falmer School. The aim of the visits was to offer pupils the chance to interview the players and develop their French vocabulary and comprehension skills.
The visits formed part of the Interreg-funded cross-cultural project between the two clubs, which is designed to exchange ideas and work practices and also help improve cultural awareness and socio-economic opportunities amongst their local communities.
For the Hove Park and Falmer School pupils this was an exciting bonus to their usual weekly French classes, and gave pupils some real life practice of French conversation with a fun football slant. For the younger Fairlight pupils, most of who have not yet started regular French lessons, this was great taster. Despite being beginners, with the help of their French Assistant teacher, the Fairlight pupils were extremely keen and planned out some questions in French to ask the players and many were confident enough to read them aloud to the players on the day.
The players were also able to respond to the younger students in English, and gave them some interesting responses and inspiring insights into their lives and their careers.
At Hove Park, the Le Havre players also presented one pupil, Nathan Etheridge, with a prize for winning the Albion's Interreg quiz at the Languages At Work fair held at the school in September.
As part of all the visits the HAC players signed team photos for the students and gave them lanyards with the HAC branding. Anthony Faulkner, Seagull Learning Centre Manager said, "The Students and the centre staff were very grateful to Le Havre for including us in their visit."
Charmian Hartley, Languages teacher at Hove Park School said, "It was so brilliant. Thank you so much for giving our students such a great opportunity. They just loved it!"
Click here for information about BHAFC and HAC and the Interreg project or visit www.infoceane.com/hac.
