Modern Foreign Languages
Curriculum Intent
Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and a means of fostering pupils’ curiosity, deepening their understanding of the diverse world we live in. The high-quality languages education we provide helps foster pupils’ curiosity, deepen their understanding of the world and enhance their cultural capital. Our aim is to broaden pupils’ horizons and encourage them to step beyond familiar cultural and geographical boundaries and develop new ways of seeing the world. We seek to enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. We also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and develop an appreciation of culture and life-style in francophone countries.
Pupils are helped to develop a competency in French that is both broad and deep in the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing based on a sound foundation of core grammar, vocabulary and phonics. They are also equipped with language and strategies to enable them to understand and communicate personal and factual information that goes beyond their immediate needs and interests, developing and justifying points of view in speech and writing, with increased spontaneity, independence and accuracy. Our hope is to broaden our students’ horizons by creating life-long language learners, prepared for further study in the subject, with the transferrable skills needed to make valuable contributions to the global community.
All pupils study French from Year 7 and can opt to continue this language through to GCSE. We have developed a broad and ambitious Modern Languages curriculum, which is rich in skills and knowledge, develops self-efficacy, fosters curiosity and promotes diversity and tolerance of other cultures.
Our Modern Languages curriculum will give pupils the opportunity to:
- Explore the patterns and sounds of language to assist aural comprehension and promote accurate pronunciation.
- Initiate and develop interactions with increasing confidence and spontaneity, both in the classroom by collaborating with peers and by preparing for real-life scenarios.
- Demonstrate comprehension skills in both reading and listening scenarios, applying phonics patterns to provide accurate transcriptions and translations of passages.
- Explore and use a wide-ranging and deepening vocabulary across a range of engaging themes, which allows them to give and justify their own opinions and formulate detailed and developed responses both orally and in writing.
- Use and manipulate a variety of key grammatical structures and patterns as well as recognise and effectively refer to tenses which convey information related to past, present and future events.
- Develop skills of recall, resilience, self-correction, resourcefulness and empathy when operating in the target language.
