The first prize is a pair of economy class bmi british midland tickets to any of their destinations in Europe. There'll be other prizes, too, donated by Oxford University Press , and all participants will receive free language learning materials from either Routledge or Hodder and Stoughton . The Race will start on May 9, when the languages to be learnt will be drawn from a pool of less widely taught European languages. It will end one month later, on June 6. The pool of languages will consist of Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian and Serbian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Gaelic, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh.
Participants choose five preferred languages from the pool at the time of their nomination.
We have books and tapes for all these languages, plus video materials for some of them. We also have links to web-based materials via our web site. Yes, they will be able to borrow materials for the duration of the Race. No, they can nominate a trainer or helper. At the end of the month, we'll ask them to come to the Language Centre and record a ten-minute conversation between each participant and a speaker of the language they have learnt.