Celebrating the European Day of Languages 2025 with Primary Languages Network
The European Day of Languages (EDoL) is celebrated every year on or around 26 September in our primary schools. Established by the Council of Europe, the day is all about celebrating the incredible diversity of languages spoken across the world.
In schools, it’s an opportunity to celebrate global communication and the languages we hear in our classrooms, our school communities, and beyond.
This year, the theme of the Primary Languages Network (PLN) European Day of Languages 2025 resources is:
✨ “Where can languages take us?” ✨
It’s a powerful question that sparks conversations about the doors language learning can open: travel, friendships, careers, and new ways of seeing the world.
At PLN, one of our favourite ways to celebrate is through song. Over the years, Joanne Eccleshare (PLN Teacher and Trainer) has created a vast catalogue of songs for schools to enjoy. This year’s song is called “My Destiny”, and it’s available now in the PLN shop in French and Spanish.
Here are some practical ways you can use the same song across different year groups to make the most of EDoL in your school:
🎧 Listen for pleasure
Listening is one of the four modalities of language learning, but this activity is all about enjoyment. Pupils simply listen to the rhythm, tone, and pace of the song—tuning their ears in and experiencing language as music. This helps reduce anxiety around listening tasks and shows pupils that listening can be fun.
👂 Listening for certain words
Encourage pupils to:
• Spot or hear any words they already know.
• Guess new words using cognates.
📖 Reading the lyrics
With older pupils, you can:
• Spot familiar words.
• Introduce cognates, semi-cognates, and false friends. Cognates are incredibly motivating for learners, because they give a sense of “I already know some words!” and build confidence. Semi-cognates are a great way to build “language detective” skills, as pupils learn to notice patterns and connections. Finally, false friends are fun to explore with pupils, as they raise awareness of the need to check meaning carefully rather than guessing based only on appearance.
• Use context to predict meaning.
🎵 Singing together
This is the heart of the celebration!
• Focus on specific or repetitive lines with younger children and build to the full rendition of the song with the backing track in assembly with older children.
• Add actions to support memorisation and engagement.
✍️ Writing extensions
Challenge pupils to:
• Adapt the song, using dictionaries to look up other nouns, adjectives, etc.
• Personalise it: “I speak (languages).”
This not only consolidates vocabulary but also allows creativity and ownership.
💬 Open up the Conversation
The European Day of Languages is also a wonderful opportunity to spark classroom conversations about language and communication. For example:
• Talk about the languages spoken in the class—invite pupils to share words or phrases from home or heritage languages.
• Reflect together: Why is it important to speak other languages? How might it be useful in the future? Encourage pupils to link their answers to travel, jobs, friendships, or even simply having fun with words.
• Play with onomatopoeia: in the song, the train goes Tchou tchou vs. Choo choo! in English (same sound, different spelling). Try others like Toc toc toc (tap, tap, tap) or Plouf! (splash). Ask pupils to suggest examples in English, then reveal the equivalent in the target language. This is always fun and highlights how sounds can be “heard” and written differently in different languages.
This kind of conversation not only builds curiosity but also helps pupils see languages as living, playful, and connected—not just something to learn, but something to experience and share.
Final thoughts
The European Day of Languages is about more than just one day—it’s a chance to celebrate, reflect, and inspire curiosity about the role of languages in our lives. With flexible resources like “My Destiny”, every year group can take part, from simply listening for enjoyment to experimenting with writing.
So… where can languages take us? Let’s help pupils start imagining the answers.