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Everyone’s a Champion! Gripple LTD, Sheffield with Meadowhead School & Language College, Sheffield

Following the successful project completed last year with our BLC students, who created a French audio tour and
glossary of key technical and business terms in French and English for Gripple customers, our new BLC team of
16 Y10 dual linguists decided to work on a new project to benefit NVQ students who visit Gripple from various
schools across the city to learn about the importance of languages in business.

We held an initial business meeting at Gripple, chaired by Office sales manager Emma Hibbert, where the students
were able to discuss ideas after having experiences the same company presentation and tour that the NVQ students
enjoyed as part of their visits. They also posed questions to Emma and other sales office linguists in not just one, but
3 languages – French, German and Spanish, depending on which of these languages they were studying.

Students decided to create information packs in each of the above languages which are taught to NVQ Business
language students in order to help them understand more about the company and the language it uses on a daily
basis. The packs are to be used by future NVQ students when they visit Gripple. They decided that they should add
the following elements to their packs in this order:

Front cover with images of Gripple Headquarters & welcome message in target language
Contents page
Authentic Invoice/Purchase order/Order Acknowledgement in target Language
Reading comprehension based on the order paperwork
Crossword/Wordsearch of Gripple business vocabulary in target Language
Feedback questionnaire about Gripple visit
Glossary of Gripple business and technical terms in target language
Page from company brochure in target language
Photograph & names of BLC students who created the pack

Students met every 4 weeks at an after school BLC club to work in three groups based on their preferred language, as
well as taking work home to complete before the deadlines set by myself, Business languages teacher, and Gripple.
Emma attended meetings where possible to help guide the students and answer any queries they may have about
their packs.

In addition to the main project, in March Gripple asked if the groups could also translate certain slides from their newly
updated Corporate PowerPoint presentation from English into the 3 languages.

Each group split the presentation, translating several slides each into French, German and Spanish, before returning
this to Gripple for approval. The students appreciated the opportunity to work on real company presentation which would
be used to present to other students and customer visitors to Gripple in future. This couldn’t be further from the type of
language they are used to learning for GCSE topics. They were picking up words and meanings for useful business
terms which they hadn’t even come across in English before – such as Purchase Order, Order acknowledgement,
Payment Terms, Lead time, in addition to some very technical Gripple specific vocabulary such as ‘ wire tensioner’
locking mechanism’ and ‘adjustable key’.

All work has now been completed, and packs are being reproduced for Gripple to use with the next set of NVQ students
from September onwards. We have a final project meeting and celebration evening at Gripple at the end of June, where
the students will present their Information Packs to Emma and the Sales team, and receive a special BLC certificate of
merit for their hard work and effort shown over the past academic year in Meadowhead & Gripples’ BLC team.

We feel that the BLC students have benefited from learning about real business language in a local company with a
global presence. Gripple have benefited from coaching some potential future employees – one of the BLC students
chose Gripple for his 2 week work experience placement in June as a direct result of his involvement in the BLC scheme.
Likewise, the NVQ students & teachers will no doubt benefit from a more structured and interesting NVQ visit to Gripple,
thanks to the new Information packs with tasks that can be both worked on during their visit, and completed back in the
classroom with their teacher, who also now has access to real life useful business language teaching materials.

Jo Allen
Language College Manager

Students recording at Gripple Students receiving their certificates from Gripple

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