Modern Foreign Languages

Miss Vincent – Subject Leader
Mr Brown
Mrs Labat

MFL Curriculum Intent

In languages, we want our students to have a happy and successful learning experience. We want to deliver high quality language lessons that should foster students’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.

Intent

Our curriculum aims to enable students to communicate in another language. We empower our students to understand and respond to French and Spanish speakers, expressing ideas and thoughts relevant to their needs. We aim to equip our students to study languages post 16 and in the longer term to be able to work with people from around the world and maybe in other countries. We focus on developing their competences in listening, speaking, reading and writing building up their independence over the years.

We intend to open students to other cultures and aim to develop their respect for others both in our communities and around the world. We want to build up their cultural capital and widen their horizons through a range of class activities, cultural events and trips.

We aim to ensure that:

• our pupils understand and respond to written and spoken language from a variety of authentic sources
• they speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity
• they can write for different purposes and audiences using the variety of grammatical structures they have learnt.

Implementation

Over the course of their study our students are given the skills and knowledge to become confident and independent speakers through phonics, vocabulary and grammar. Learning is organised in a spiral approach and progression is built in the curriculum. Over the course of their learning, students revisit regularly the language they learn and continually practise the skills that allow them to become good communicators.

From Year 7, we teach students the specific skills they will need later on in their study for GCSE and A Level. We adapt our teaching to cater for the needs, abilities and interests of each individual student.

Through a broad range of activities, students are taught to:

• Identify and use tenses and other structures which convey the present, past and future
• Use and manipulate key grammatical structures and patterns
• Develop a wide vocabulary allowing them to give and justify their opinions and take part in discussion about wider issues than their immediate needs and interests.
• use accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation

Students also learn to:

• Listen and respond to a variety of spoken language
• Transcribe words and sentences that they hear
• Read original and adapted materials and understand their purpose
• Read literary texts which expand their understanding of the language and culture
• Write creatively and translate written texts accurately from and into the target language.

Impact

We know that our students make good progress through regular assessments they take. Every term they are assessed in their listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. Their work is moderated to ensure consistency.

To read more about the way our curriculum across the Year groups, please look at our MFL Learning Journey and KS overviews below.