Routes into Languages Cymru

Cardiff University are the national coordinating institution for Routes into Languages Cymru (Routes Cymru).

Routes Cymru is a pan-Wales outreach project which promotes the many benefits and opportunities inherent in the learning of international languages in schools across Wales. It aims to raise the profile of international languages across Wales and to support schools in their delivery of excellent international languages provision by providing a range of additional opportunities to interact with international languages.

We are one of 5 universities in Wales (Bangor University, Aberystwyth University, Cardiff Metropolitan University and Swansea University) who fund the programme together with a number of the Welsh education consortia: the Central South Consortium (CSC), the Educational Achievement Service (EAS) consortium and British Council Wales.

Our programme of activities

Routes Cymru supports the delivery of a wide range of activities designed to further develop interest in language learning for primary and secondary school learners. Our menu of activities is free for Local Education Authority (LEA) maintained schools in Wales.

A student is giving a presentation. She's looking at the screen and is referring to images on the screen. — One of Routes into Languages Cymru's Student Language Ambassadors giving a presentation

Routes language ambassadors

One of the main activities offered by Routes Cymru is our Student Language Ambassador (SLA) sessions. SLAs play a very important role in assisting Routes Cymru’s aim to promote the visibility, uptake and profile of international languages in schools in Wales. Routes Cymru train undergraduate and postgraduate students from across Welsh universities to deliver a variety of language sessions to primary and secondary school learners.

These sessions include SLA sharing their personal language journeys, providing language taster sessions in different international languages, and giving talks on language skills and pathways that can come from studying languages – this often involves showcasing the huge diversity of skills and opportunities that languages open to you.

Pupil Language Ambassadors

The Pupil Language Ambassador (PLA) programme is aimed at secondary school learners specifically in years 7-9. Teachers can select between 5 to 7 learners to represent their school as language ambassadors, promoting International Languages within their school and the wider community. Following the PLA training organised by Routes Cymru learners complete a range of exciting PLA challenges within their school with the aim of inspiring fellow learners to continue studying languages.

Following the completion of the PLA challenges, teachers are then able to nominate their learners for the PLA Team of the Year Award. The PLA teams will need to have completed all the required activities to be nominated for this award and provide evidence of their completed challenges. The winning team will be announced at the PLA ceremony which is held in the summer.

International Language Superheroes

Following the success of the Primary Toolkit launched by Routes Cymru we now offer a programme targeted at year 5 learners. The aim is to train these learners to act as language ambassadors (superheroes!) in their schools. This programme aims to create a peer-to-peer support network embedded in the school community and these learners are trained as inspirational role models for the primary setting.

Learners will be trained at Cardiff University, completing a range of exciting activities and will then have a set of language challenges to complete once they return to school. Again, this is to promote and share the interest of language learning with their peers and within the wider school community.