Celebrating ‘the European Day of Languages’ on the 26th September, students around the world competed in the Vocab Express Championships. 

Amelia Harrison from Newstead Wood School for girls in Orpington came second globally in German, scoring over 120,000 points in under a week. She finished a well-deserved fourth place on the worldwide leader board, just missing a podium place.

Vocab Express gave 150 free logins to schools to enter this six day amazing online competition and what outstanding results the students have had. Aged just 14, this is a massive achievement and definitely wasn’t a walk through the park.

‘At the start of the competition, I was aiming to learn as much vocabulary as possible, but when I realised that I was high up on the leader board, I wanted to do well’ she says. Miss Harrison (pictured) knew how much of a deal this was and showed her determination to strive forward. However, as we all know too well, the balance between the competition and homework, exams, commitments, all in the GCSE years, can have such effects on one’s well-being. ‘It was a rare week where I had loads of time to do the competition and I never slept late because I knew I had school the next day.’ Her school work wasn’t let down by this addictive competition.

When I did it, competing intensely with others, I did exactly the opposite of what Amelia did. I slept late on the weekdays and found myself sleeping at 2.00 a.m. on weekends, which was obviously the wrong strategy. But the result was rewarding. Fortunately, Amelia found the right balance between everything and stormed her way through strategically.

‘I was constantly scoring and my priority was to learn the words. I was proud of what I achieved and I learnt a lot. In the future, I don’t want to give up and I want to continue to learn new information everyday’.

Towards the end of the interview, she told me what she took away from competing and not just about her tremendous result. She conveyed that no one should lose sleep and destroy their state of mind over these competitions, but at the same time, she said ‘don’t give up on something you want to pursue’. Be content and proud with what you have achieved at the end of it all.