On Thursday 2nd July six girls from Year 7 represented Howell’s at the national final of the “Routes into Languages” Spelling Bee held at Cardiff University. The girls were amongst the 49 students to have reached the final out of a total number of 3000 contestants. Alice B. and Ella K. competed in the first round for Spanish with Ella getting through to the stage and being awarded a very commendable 4th place. There were 30 contestants in French and hence two rounds. Sadie E. and Ziraili U. did extremely well to get through to the second round against very fierce competition. Finally, in the Welsh section Holly P. was awarded second place overall and Rookmini M. achieved an outstanding first place. In addition to the competition there were a number of high profile speakers who commended the contestants on their performance and who spoke about their own careers and how the knowledge of a language had been a huge asset to them. The event not only helped the entrants to develop their knowledge of their own chosen language but it also helped to raise the profile of language learning in general. The girls were a credit to the school and they deserve to be very proud of their performance.