Languages and Cultures Essay Prize

The Languages and Cultures Essay Prize is a competition that can be entered by students in Year 12 or the Lower 6th. Candidates are invited to submit an essay on one of a number of topics.

Questions for the 2025 competition are as follows:

1. ‘Culture is a place where solidarity and community are made possible.’ Discuss

2. ‘Language makes us more than we make language’. Discuss.

3. ‘Poetry is speech confronting the limits of speech itself’. Discuss.

4. ‘Play should be taken seriously. It is intrinsically related to culture.’ Discuss.

5. ‘Nothing is ever truly “lost in translation”‘. Discuss.

You should answer one question only.

Format: The essay should treat elements of any language (including English) and/or cultural form or artefact (literature, visual art, cinema, material culture, etc). Essays can be up to 3,000 words, including all footnotes and references but excluding the bibliography. It’s worth considering the use of examples in your essays: the best essays often use a diverse selection of contemporary, historical or literary examples. We encourage you to provide references to your sources of information, and to include a bibliography at the end of the essay. Please include your name on the document and save the file as “Surname, First name”.

Eligibility: The Prize is for students in Year 12 or Lower 6th at the time the questions are released in February. Students based abroad are most welcome to participate. To be eligible, you must be in your penultimate year of school. That is, to be eligible for the 2025 competition, you should be expecting to receive your final school results in the year from September 2025 to August 2026. This condition is held to strictly and, to be fair to the participants, no exceptions are made. Each entrant to the competition is allowed to submit only one essay.

Submissions: Essays must be submitted by 12 noon (UK time) on Friday 1 August 2025. Please submit essays using the form below.

Prize: The competition carries a First Prize of £600, to be split equally between the candidate and his or her school or college (the school or college’s portion of the prize to be issued in the form of book tokens), and a Second Prize of £400, which again is to be shared equally between the candidate and his or her school or college. Winners will be announced in September, and will be invited to visit the College to meet some of the teaching staff.

Contact: Any queries from students who may be interested in submitting work for the prize, or their teachers, should be directed to the Admissions Office by email to: admissions@trin.cam.ac.uk.

About you

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Accepted file types: doc, docx, pdf, Max. file size: 2 MB.

Please list any help you received in producing this essay from either another person (e.g. 'teacher commented on my draft') or from Artificial Intelligence (e.g. ChatGPT). If you did not receive any such help, please write 'none'.(Required)

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I confirm that I have not entered the Languages & Cultures Essay Prize competition in any other year(Required)

I confirm that I agree to the following terms and conditions:(Required)

1. I hereby agree that for educational/non-commercial purposes the College may use the Recordings (transcribed or otherwise) and may use the essay I submit (‘Essay’) (with due acknowledgement of my authorship) throughout the world for the full period of copyright, including all renewals, reversions, extensions and revivals of such period, in the following ways: a) storing, publishing or transmitting the Recordings and/or the Essay in College internal archives and databases; and b) exhibiting, publishing or transmitting the Recordings and/or the Essay in print, on DVD or other digital media and on the Internet at College websites and College-affiliated websites; and c) distributing the Recordings and/or the Essay to the press, media organisations and other interested parties for publication, transmission or broadcast.] 2. The information provided in this form is used for the administration of the Linguistics Essay Prize and is managed and stored in accordance with UK Data Protection regulations http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/univ/information/dpa/. 3. This agreement shall be governed in all respects by English law.

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How information about you will be used

Your email address will only be used for the purposes of contacting you in regards to your submission . It will not be used for any other reason or given or sold to any other company or organization. You will receive a copy of the information you have provided to the email address you specify.

Past prize winners

2024

First Prize: Tom Arthur (Pate’s Grammar School)
Second Prize: Oliver Waller (Moulsham High School)

2023

First Prize: Steffan Nicholas (Penweddig Comprehensive School)
Joint Second Prize: Melissa Berry (The Sixth Form College Colchester); Krish Deshpande (Colchester Royal Grammar School)