A group of L3 Sport students on the Gorseinon campus visited a ‘Bilingualism in Sport’ conference at Cardiff and Vale College.
The day was organised by the college, following sponsorship from CollegesWales, with the aim of promoting the Welsh language in sport. There was an interesting session from Huw Llywelyn Davies about commentating bilingually for the BBC on rugby, football and cricket games, and students got a taste of commentating on live games.
Owain Llŷr, a sport journalist with the BBC, set the students a task to create a 40 second news bulletin on the historical Wales v Belgium game in the Euro 2016. Students then had to perform their piece in front of a camera.
Gower College Swansea student Joshua Davies performed his report in Welsh and brought glory to the college as he appeared on the ‘Newyddion 9’ news programme on S4C that same night. The programme can be seen on ClickView
There was also an opportunity to relive the incredible Wales 2016 Euro journey during an inspiring Q&A session with Ian Gwyn Hughes, Head of Communications for the FAW, who was responsible for promoting the Wales team during the Euro 2016 campaign.
It was a very entertaining talk as he explained how the Welsh team’s pride at representing their country developed by raising the teams’ awareness of historical events in Wales – the Aberfan disaster, visiting Hedd Wyn’s grave and learning the Welsh national anthem. It was all to pay tribute to the supporters who followed the team’s journey.
In the afternoon there was a ‘How to Coach Bilingually’ session and students’ football and rugby skills were put to the test by the Urdd and Dan Gwyn Hughes.
Lastly, there was a Q&A session with ex-rugby player and presenter Jonathan Davies. In his session he told students that using what language they have is more important than worrying about their correctness.
“I would like to thank Cardiff and Vale College for the invitation to attend the conference,” says Anna Davies, Bilingual Champion at Gower College Swansea. “It was a fantastic opportunity for our students to learn what role the Welsh language has in the world of sport in Wales and to discover that they all have skills in Welsh to develop - it’s using them that is important. I would also like to thank lecturers Wayne Price and Marc Jones for helping to organise and manage the students. The hope is that we can build on the enthusiasm that was shown by the students towards the Welsh language, by introducing more Welsh in the sport learning area in college.”