APPRENTICES FROM ROLLS-ROYCE POWER SYSTEMS WIN PRIZE IN FEDERAL FOREIGN LANGUAGES COMPETITION

• Film “Apprenticeship pays - and why don’t we use it” receives award

• Involvement promoted social and inter-cultural skills

For the first time ever, four apprentices from Rolls-Royce Power Systems have won an award in the Federal Foreign Languages Competition with their short film "Apprenticeship pays - and why don’t we use it”. As one of a total of 135 teams of apprentices, the trainees from Rolls-Royce subsidiary MTU Friedrichshafen submitted a foreign language media report produced by themselves as their entry for the competition. The prize-giving ceremony, at which the overall winners - the apprentices from Claas - and three other teams received their awards, took place recently in the Bavarian town of Amberg. As well as the MTU Friedrichshafen apprentices, the teams from the Georg-Simon-Ohm Vocational College in Cologne and from the Kyffhäuserkreis State Vocational Education Center were also prize-winners. 

Steffen Besserer, Head of Staff Development at Rolls-Royce Power Systems, congratulated the winners and emphasized the importance of foreign languages in staff training. "Through this project, the apprentices have strengthened not only their social skills such as team-working but also their inter-cultural abilities," he stated.

The winning entry from the third-year industrial mechanic apprentices was all about how apprentices at the Aiken (USA) plant of Rolls-Royce Power Systems subsidiary MTU America changed roles to become trainers instead of trainees. In that position they oversaw the production of a crank and rocker linkage by trainees as the US plant from planning through to manufacture. 

The Federal Foreign Languages Competition was set up in 1979 to foster young people's interest in foreign languages and cultures. Its sponsors are the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Endowment Association for German Science) and the State Culture Ministers' Conference. Its chief patron is German President, Joachim Gauck. 

Link to film: http://bit.ly/1zFpWU0 or www.rrpowersystems.com