Youngest Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Education Activist, Malala Yousafzai, again officially endorses this year’s Mother Tongue Other Tongue Competition.

It’s Back! It’s EVEN BIGGER, Better and Bolder than Before!

The Mother Tongue Other Tongue project receives the Queen’s Award, the highest national recognition. An idea originally developed by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Manchester Met, and Routes into Languages North West, this national multilingual poetry competition has already inspired over 30,000 pupils and aims to celebrate cultural diversity and the many languages currently spoken in schools across the UK.

Mother Tongue Other Tongue is a free to enter competition open to pupils aged between 8 and 18 which launches this on 22 February as part of the Manchester City of Literature International Mother Language Day celebrations.

Mother Tongue asks pupils, who do not have English as a first language, to write about a creative poem or song in their native language, while Other Tongue asks pupils to create an original poem in a second language they are learning at school (French, German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Urdu and Mandarin).

In the North West of England, the competition is open to all primary schools and secondary schools. Entries received will be judged in four categories:

1. Years 4, 5 & 6
2. Years 7, 8 & 9
3. Years 10 & 11.
4. Years 12 & 13.

Entries need to be submitted by Wednesday 26th May. The winners will be invited to the Poetry Library at Manchester Metropolitan University on Wednesday 14th July.