Head of MFL – Miss E Bache
Email – bachee@hanson.org.uk
Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. Our aim is to broaden pupils’ horizons and encourage them to step beyond familiar cultural boundaries and develop new ways of seeing the world. Our teaching should 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. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.
Pupils should develop a competency 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 should also be able 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.
Critical learning, high frequency language and key communicative functions are revisited receptively and productively many times as we progress through the curriculum. For example when learning how to describe activities done on a past holiday in French, we need to revisit previous teaching on how to conjugate the verbs ‘avoir and être’. In Spanish, when talking about food and drink and using the idiom ‘tener hambre/sed’ we need to revisit the present tense of the irregular verb ‘tener’.
Our ultimate goal with our pupils is to develop their ability to be self-efficacious and to create the optimal conditions for learner success.
Intent
We aspire to expose our pupils to a broad and ambitious Modern Languages curriculum, which is rich in skills and knowledge, develops self-efficacy, kindles curiosity and promotes diversity and tolerance of other cultures. Our Modern Languages curriculum will give pupils the opportunity to:
- use language skills, receptively and productively, for communication in the real world, for practical purposes, for their immediate needs, interests and beyond and to express and justify opinions
- develop their confidence and autonomy to access new and unfamiliar language through the use of decoding skills brought about by the explicit teaching of phonics and sound patterns
- work towards becoming a fluent and spontaneous speaker of the foreign language
KS4 Curriculum
Students at Hanson Academy can expect high levels of teaching in Modern Languages. Students follow a curriculum designed on recalling previously taught knowledge so that they can use the language spontaneously. EAL students are also offered the option to do a GCSE in their language.
Students study the following themes:
The GCSE is examined though 4 exams, listening, reading, writing and speaking, each element being 25% of the overall grade. French and Spanish are both tiered to higher and foundation and students must take all exams at the same tier.
Students will be expected to regularly use the website Language Nut. This online platform helps with both learning and revision and when used regularly contributes to significant progress.
Exam board specifications
Revision sites:
Language Nut: Languagenut | Digital Language Resources for Schools
Bitesize French: GCSE French – AQA – BBC Bitesize
Bitesize Spanish: GCSE Spanish – AQA – BBC Bitesize