Many of you have asked about Junior Language Challenge for 2013 and we're sorry that it's taken us this long to get back in touch. We can now reveal more details about the competition for this year and we'll start by saying that there is some good and bad news.

As many of you know, we have been running the EuroTalk Junior Language Challenge in its current form for about eight years, since its original trial in Cornwall in 2003. We’ve had a lot of fun, as well as a few disasters, and hope we’ve genuinely helped encourage language learning in primary schools. But now we feel it’s time to move on.

The bad news...

The bad news is that after careful consideration, there won’t be a normal Junior Language Challenge in 2012. It was an extremely tough decision, and is the result of hours of debate, lots of serious thought and several arguments!

We're really sorry about this; we know that you have continuously supported the JLC over the last few years and we hate to disappoint you and the children, many of whom we realise will have been looking forward to this year's competition.

The good news!

The good news is that we are working on a brand new Junior Language Challenge, to launch in 2013. This will use a completely updated version of Talk Now, running in a web browser, which we hope will help with the problems a lot of schools have experienced due to institutional firewalls, and running the software on machines other than Windows PCs. The new design will have updated pictures and new games to test the children on their language skills.

If any of you have seen our new Talk Now DL range, you'll have an idea what the program will look like, and we hope you'll agree it looks pretty good! We also hope to be able to incorporate some more advanced material taken from our uTalk range of products, as frankly, for some of your students, the old Talk Now was proving a bit too easy ☺

We need your help

We feel that it’s very important that the new system should be properly tested before we go live with it, so we are taking a year off to fully develop and test the new system. And we’d like your help with this. We are asking everyone who has been interested or involved in the JLC in the past and seeing as most of you know our products inside and out, we cannot think of anyone more perfect to be our 'beta-testers'.

Later this year, once we’re ready, we intend to run a beta-test of 'round one' of the new challenge, and we hope that some schools will be willing to take part in this. There will be no age restriction, so current Year 5 pupils or even Year 6 pupils can try it out. Although this will not be a full JLC with a big prize at the end, we hope to provide small prizes for the competitors who do best.

Sadly there will not be a JLC grand finale at the Language Show Live this October – but we will be there as usual, and providing a range of competitions and activities, so do please visit us if you can.

We'll be looking for feedback on how the system works, how we can improve it and what you think of it in general. Even though we cannot hold a proper JLC competition this year, we hope that this goes some way towards making up for it.

Please let us know...

Right now we would really appreciate it if you could let us know whether you or your school would be willing in principle to take part in this new Round One (obviously free of charge). If you are interested, then we will keep you updated and let you know as soon as we are ready to start. Please let us know by sending an email to jlc@eurotalk.com by choosing one of the following:

- Yes please, I would be interested in finding out more about the new JLC beta test, and maybe in taking part.

- No thanks, I really don’t want to get involved in any beta-testing!

Thank you, and as always we really value your involvement.

With very best wishes,

The JLC team - Katie, Chelsey, Liz, Franco, Dave, Gloria and Dick