Published on: 14 August 2013


Christ Church finished 20th globally, collected three State awards and 200 individual awards in this year’s Language Perfect World Championships. More than 500 Christ Church boys took part in the international languages competition – answering over 924,000 questions and spending almost 3,000 hours online.

The School finished second in Western Australia and 13th in Australia in the 10-day championships, which is touted as the largest online languages competition in the world with over 1,000 schools competing. Students earn points for producing correct answers to vocabulary and grammar questions, under time pressure, in any of 14 languages.

Christ Church won the Chinese Language Teachers’ Association of WA’s award for the top performing school in Chinese in WA; the Association of Independent Schools of WA (AISWA) award for the top performing AISWA school; and the Modern Language Teachers’ Association of WA award.

At the Senior School Assembly this week, Language Perfect’s Tania Christie and AISWA’s Claire Leong presented Year 9 students James Wood (elite level) and Mason Wei (gold level), and Year 10 student Anthony Tsang (elite level), with their certificates as Christ Church’s top performing students.

Assistant Head of Languages Henning Holzheuer said it was the fifth year the School had subscribed to the Language Perfect site, which stages the annual world championships. “It really is the answer to the tedious question of vocabulary revision,” he said. “With four learning modes to use, not only do our boys know their ‘target language’ words back to front, they improve their listening comprehension, as well as their English literacy. It’s yet another great reason for learning another language.”

School achievements:

  • 20th overall globally out of 1054 schools
  • 2nd overall in WA out of 114 schools
  • 13th overall in Australia out of 705 schools
  • 9th overall in the 501 to 1,000 students category out of 110 schools
  • 1st in WA for the 501 to 1,000 students category out of 15 schools
  • 8th in Australia for the 501 to 1,000 students category out of 93 schools
  • 2nd for French in WA out of 92 schools
  • 5th overall in Tongan out of 72 schools
  • 38th in French out of 833 schools
  • 11th overall in Chinese out of 505 schools