What is our vision in Modern Foreign Languages?
Languages equip language learners with the confidence, skills and cultural understanding to engage in meaningful experiences with people from other cultures. We aim to help our students to become confident and compassionate learners who want to engage in positive and meaningful relationships both from and beyond their own culture. The curriculum aims to stimulate interest in language learning, develop thinking skills and build the bricks of listening, speaking, reading and writing for future language learning, thereby opening doors for students to study, work and live abroad.
The sequencing of learning over KS3 and KS4 languages curriculum should enable learners to be introduced to and then re-visit core linguistic and grammatical concepts at regular intervals. The curriculum allows for this understanding to be constantly revisited, which allows learners to retrieve knowledge and apply to other parts of the curriculum.
Students will be expected to develop listening skills in order to understand target language conversations and to infer meaning from longer exchanges. Their spoken skills will enable them to express and justify opinions and manipulate grammar to use a variety of tenses, extending ideas and using complex structures. Reading skills will be equally developed to recognise familiar and less familiar vocabulary across a range of texts including literary and authentic texts and to translate from the target language into English. Language learners will be expected to write coherently for different purposes with the specific intention of describing, narrating, expressing and justifying opinions and discussing past and future intentions. Students will have the skills to translate English into the target language. All skills and subject knowledge acquisition is built up cumulatively. Subject knowledge is developed over time, and retrieval strategies are deployed which enable students to master key skills and language.
Modern Foreign Languages curriculum learning journey
Modern Foreign Languages at KS3
Students learn language through a variety of topics which includes self and family, leisure, holidays, school life and home and local area. Students are taught how to ask and answer questions, justify opinions and explain their ideas. Units of work include a comprehensive grammar programme which covers all the tenses and understanding of gender, word order and other linguistic structures. Students develop the following learning strategies: memorising and applying new phrases, listening for gist and detail, using a bi-lingual dictionary, and applying phonic patterns.
Curriculum learning grids at KS3
Spanish
German
French
Support for students
Modern Foreign Languages Super Curriculum
Modern Foreign Languages at KS4
We offer GCSEs in French, German and Spanish. Students opt for their languages GCSE at the end of Year 8 and may choose to continue with either one language or both.
Key Stage 4 Modern Foreign Languages GCSE
Students study the AQA GCSE course.
The principal themes are:
- Identity and culture
- Local, national, international and global areas of interest
- Current and future study and employment
Listening
Understanding and responding to different types of spoken language
- 25% of GCSE
- Foundation: 35 minutes
- Higher: 45 minutes
- Questions in Target Language and English
Reading
Understanding and responding to different types of language
- 25% of GCSE
- Foundation: 45 minutes
- Higher: 1 hour
- Questions in Target Language and English
- Translation into English
Speaking
Communicating and interacting effectively in speech for a variety of purposes
- Foundation: 7-9 minutes (+preparation time)
- Higher: 10-12 minutes (+ preparation time)
- Role play
- Photo card
- General conversation
Writing
Communicating effectively in writing for a variety of purposes
- Foundation: 1 hour
- Higher: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Message, short passage, structured writing task, open-ended writing task (4 sentences – 150 words)
- Translation into Target Language
Students learn to understand spoken and written language (listening and reading) and how to communicate in the language (speaking and writing). Students are also taught essential, transferable study skills and an appreciation of how the language works so that they can apply their knowledge of grammar across a variety of contexts.
Curriculum learning grids at KS4
Spanish
German
French
Extended Learning Opportunities in Modern Foreign Languages
We would highly recommend one of our trips abroad. We aim to offer trips abroad for Years 9 and 10. These include cultural visits to France and Spain and a well-established exchange to Haywards Heath’s twin town in Germany.
Further Education & Career Pathways in Modern Foreign Languages
How can parents and carers support learning ?
Parents can support by encouraging students to adopt good learning habits around accumulating vocabulary related to the programme of study.
