On 13 May 2026, five second-years in French at Jesus College took part in a new French-speaking competition devised by lectrice Stéléna Serhane in front of a packed audience of academics, friends and family. The judges, acclaimed singer-songwriter Laurent Voulzy and St Andrew's academic Dr Marine Ganovsky, were assessing three elements - recitation of a French poem, explanation in English of why they'd selected it, and a speech in French on the topic of 'la femme'. All elements were performed from memory. Poems were chosen from Labé, Baudelaire (twice!), Rimbaud, and Apollinaire, all brilliantly performed and explained. The speeches on the topic of 'la femme' were passionately delivered, variously addressing historical inequality and injustice, Delacroix's famous painting 'Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement' and reworkings of it by later artists, why in Welsh the default pronoun is feminine, and therefore one says *she rains* not *il pleut*, and finally, why Phèdre should be viewed as a heroine of great confessional honesty and the standard bearer for unrequited love. The students displayed great creativity and ingenuity, and judges Voulzy and Ganovsky were so impressed by the quality of analysis, the creativity of interpretation and the general feat of memory that they awarded the top slot to three of the five students, also commending the remaining two for their work. Should languages students be given the option to do things like this in their finals oral exam? Answers on a post-card please.
https://www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/a-stella-night-for-modern-languages-students/