They Spoke and They Conquered

Back in January, we announced this year's Cicéronnades competition organised by the Académie of Orléans-Tours, which enncourages pupils to video themselves reciting a poem or prose text. The winners have just been announced, as part of la semaine des langues vivantes. 

The Académie of Orléans-Tours is organising a competition for pupils to recite texts in the languages they are learning, which is open to pupils and students (up to the third year of university) all over France and in lycées français abroad.

For its second year, the competition, open to pupils and students (up to the third year of university) all over France and in lycées français abroad, covered a wide range of modern languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French as a foreign language, French as a second language, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish) as well as ancient Greek and Latin.

Individual pupils make a simple video of themselves reciting their text. The deadline for entries is 11 March 2022, and the winners will be announced on 8 April.

For secondary pupils, there were set texts, one a poem and the other a speech.

For collège (cycle 4) , the poem was by Victorian poet Ernest Dowson, tled in Latin "Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam". For lycée it is William Shakespeare's sonnet number 12, "When I Do Count the Clock that Tells the Time". For collège pupils the speech was one given by a young Ugandan climate justice activist, Vanessa Nakate, at a conference on Earth Day 2021.  For lycée, pupils could recite a speech made by Britain's Prince Charles to the COP21 conference in 2015.

For collège, the three winners in English are:
First prize: Eléa Schott-Barta, Collège Paul-Louis Courier, Tours.
Second prize: Fiona Tuvee, Collège Victor Hugo, Puiseaux
Third prize: Jean-David Carouée, Collège Pablo Picasso, Charette-sur-Loing

And for lycée:
First prize: Faustine Pareau-Deniau, Lycée Marceau, Chartres
Second prize: Leopold Grindel-Chollet, Lycée Thérès Planiol, Loches
Third prize: Maëlle  Gombart-Roze, Lycée Maurice Genevoix, Ingré

Congratulations to all of you!

You'll find the winners in the different languages and levels as well as all the texts for contest on the Académie Orléans-Tours website .