Starting an after-school club for World Languages

When I joined the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) in 2025, I was invited to contribute an article for their Newsletter, to talk about my new project, teaching world languages and linguistics to children.

In early 2024 I decided to take a career break from 20 years of full-time employment in the localisation Industry. I had built a career specialising in all things machine translation (MT), and had made my way to head of MT/Al operations for a global language service provider (SP) by 2022. It’s a fascinating space to work in, but needed fresh air and something more inspired.

Two aspects I always enjoyed particularly in my work were the daily collaboration with language enthusiasts around the world, and the engagement with languages I wasn’t already familiar with. I wanted to carry this notion of working across world languages forward, and I and wanted to work with people face to face, ideally with children.

Volunteering with a local charity and its school outreach programme provided a useful introduction to this space. By 2024, my own children were eight and four years old: a great age for natural curiosity in themselves, and increasingly in the wider world around them. One evening we were reading a book about the importance of the invention of writing. My daughter, to my surprise, took this back one step further and asked: “But why did humans even start to speak?’

This question stuck with me and confirmed my belief that despite the decline in MFT. in schools, younger children are naturally curious about language in the broadest sense. It helped me define a direction forward: a world languages and linguistics club for primary-aged schoolchildren.

In addition to my professional background and my children’s curiosity in languages, living in sonth London provides an almost obvious context for multilingual education: local primary schools all have a high percentage of bilingual or multilingual families from all over the world. I had already observed from previous outreach work that some cultures celebrate their multilingualism and send their children to Saturday school while others tend to hide it. I also knew families where English is the only spoken language, and who felt they were missing out by not being able to raise their chikleen bilingually. My goal was to provide a selling hat could include dillerent backgrounds, with the objective of broadening all our horizons, stimulating natural curiosity and removing fears around learning new languages.

My Language Explorers club launched after the Easter holidays, and after an initial worry that nobody woukl sign up, was delighted to have two age groups going alcad: five children n years 1 and 2 (aged five to six) and 10 children in years 3 to 5 aged between six and 10). The cab ran for the 10 weeks of the summer term, an hour a week, and 1 am pleased to say really exceeded my expectations.

The children came from a range of linguistic backgrounds:
English only; English as an additional language (IAL,, bilingual/ multilingual to different extents; and some degree of cydexia. The heritage and home languages represented were Jamaican patois, Afrikaans, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Indonesian, German, Finnish and Portuguese.

We started our journey 5,000 years ago with the invention of writing. We looked at Proto-Indo-European with the Yamnaya; we explored language patterns and language families; we marked Intentional Refugee Week by translating fruit from the school’s edible garden and making short introductory dialogues; we practised the register in Turkish and French; we listened to audio recordings from the community; we celebrated midsummer, looked at bilingual books from the library, looked at the timeline of English and linked it to the curriculum (Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Saxons); and we wrote and performed poems.

I intentionally kept the lesson planning very flexible from week to week, to be able to adjust it to the children in my groups, and to respond quickly if my ideas didn’t work in the classroom. Bach lesson consisted of independent working, a topic recap involving writing, a new topic discussion and a little exchange in a foreign language, followed by a longer creative activity, game, performance or puzzle-like challenge. We had a go al bookbinding, worked with clay, and used watercolour, scissors and cardboard for our weekly projects.

Reflecting on this journey from my grandparents’ old summerhouse here in Finland, I am grateful I had the opportunity to formulate this new idea, let it germinate and implement it in practice. It has been the most enthusiastic confirmation of the value of language learning, with positive feedback from children and parents. And next year, there is so much mom to grow.

After graduating from translation and conference interpreting (Universitat des Saarlandes, Herot Watt university), with additional degrees in Francophone studies and Finnish language, Lena Marg worked in global LSPs for 20 years with a focus on machine translation and post editing. Starting out as a computational linguist the went on to lead multilingual, cross functional teams, building her expertise at the intersection of MT/AI technologies, localisation workflows, linguists and customers.

The motivation for my club had been manifold, but one was right in front of my eyes, everyday: London – this multicultural and multilingual city, so much to celebrate and discover!

Now I am 1 year in, and I am pleased to say: going strong! Kids return, new kids give it a go… 50:50 boys and girls, some with home languages, some with heritage languages, some with English as additional languages, some who are into runes, some who like to do British accents, some who just want to have a good time with their mates.