Languages

We want our students to be open-minded, resilient, confident communicators. We believe that all students can benefit from studying a modern foreign language in terms of the academic knowledge, cultural awareness and cognitive and literacy benefits.

We believe that learning a language opens doors for students. Qualifications in MFL allow students to access courses at prestigious Higher Education institutions and to mingle with students from more affluent backgrounds with confidence. Exposure to target language culture, cinema and music allows students to expand their horizons beyond their immediate surroundings and family experience.

Language learning plays a key role in the development of students’ wider vocabulary, as French and Spanish words are frequently cognates for higher register English words (eg: words with Latin roots). Language learning thereby presents many opportunities to make links to English and enhance comprehension skills.

We believe that the number one purpose of language is to be able to communicate. Therefore, we do not seek to put off students with excessive focus on accuracy in the early stages of their learning. We want our students to experience success and feel confident, in order to motivate them to persevere with their learning.

We seek to develop students’ open-mindedness, both to other cultures and to coping with the unknown. We know that Ambiguity Tolerance is an important quality to develop in our learners and strive to promote this at all levels by providing opportunities for students to read challenging texts and see how they can identify relevant information despite not understanding every word. We aim to equip our students with strategies for making sense of unfamiliar language.

 

Please see our department documentation which details our curriculum intent and schemes of work.