Bienvenue! ¡Bienvenidos! - Welcome to the Modern Foreign Languages department!
At The Roseland we support language learning as part of skills for life. As an International School we do not only focus on language but also on culture and wider world.
We want our students leave as confident, competent and ambitious cosmopolitan citizens who can function independently in the today’s modern and multicultural world.
We feel that the process of learning a foreign language forms an integral part of personal development for every student: logical and lateral thinking, assertiveness, creative and independent thinking, team work, personal organisation, use of reference materials and resources, learning through new technologies, leadership skills, formal and informal communication, different writing styles, analytical thinking, and memory training, to name just a few. All of these skills are vital for lifelong learning.
Language skills will positively support students through different career paths in the world of commerce and services. The ability to communicate in another language will give to those students a notable advantage in the forever increasingly competitive world of work and thus make them more desirable for an employer.
Modern Languages at The Roseland are taught through a number of learning techniques that inspire students, help them progress by making the language learning real and current. Creative projects, drama, songs and poems are becoming a frequent feature of lessons. Spontaneous and authentic language through role play, simulation and authentic electronic resources helps students understand how the language works in a native environment.
The new apps and electronic resources that we are exploring in the MFL context:
www.classroomgoogle www.socrative.com www.goconquer.com
www.quizlet.com www.padlet.com
MFL Team:
Mrs McGreal - Teaching Team Leader for MFL
Mrs Chanter – Assistant Headteacher [Spanish, Russian, French, Czech
Mr Davidson – French/ Spanish Teacher
Mrs Tindale – Teaching Practitioner, Literacy Specialist
MFL Curriculum:
We have been building stronger links with our primary schools. As a consequence, we are developing a deeper understanding of the French curriculum offered in Key Stage 2. This then enables us to personalise the learning from the outset.
We intend to continue sharing good practice, learning and assessment strategies to make the transition to The Roseland even smoother, consolidate the pupils’ learning, and develop it further.
Our Year 7 curriculum is therefore more fluid, year on year, in order to accommodate all the learning steps achieved in the primary school.
Year 7 French and Spanish is taught to all students in Year 7 in mixed ability teaching groups.
Lessons focus on the four key skills of language learning, listening, speaking, reading and writing.
All students complete Baseline tests in September to establish the starting point of their learning journey in French. The tests are prepared based on their previous learning in the primary schools. This further informs the direction of the curriculum for Year 7 so that all students are appropriately challenged within their lessons from the outset.
Students study 4 lessons of French per fortnight. They complete various assessment tasks throughout the year to measure their achievements. The assessments focus on all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. All the topics are relevant to the new GCSE content.
At the end of the academic year all students complete The Finals which consolidate their Year 7 learning journey in French.
Key Skills:
- Pronunciation, phonics, spelling
- Simple questions & responses
- Word order and sentence structure
- Expressing opinions
- Developing my answers
- Understanding to the gist
- Translation skills
- Using cognates and English to understand increasingly more challenging texts
- Writing more structured paragraphs
Years 8 In Year 8 students are set in extension, higher and foundation groups based on their progress in Year 7.
All students continue learning French in Year 8.
In order to widen their language opportunities further, all students in Year 8 take up a second language, Spanish. The students follow the same setting in both languages.
All students access the same curriculum irrespective of setting that links to the new GCSE requirements. This means that a student could be moved to different group based on his/her progress in order to facilitate the most appropriate pace and level of challenge. We would like all students to be happy in their lessons, manage their learning with success but at the same time to always be ambitious and aim higher.
In French students further build up their learning and widen their range of skills.
Students positively embrace the opportunity to start another language. They build on their language understanding of French and often can progress in a similar pace, or indeed faster. By this point they are already familiar with the grammatical terms and accustomed to the learning approach therefore they adapt to the second language quickly.
All groups students study 3 lessons of French and 3 lessons of Spanish per fortnight.
All students complete various assessment tasks throughout the year to measure their achievements. The assessments focus on all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. At the end of the academic year all students complete The Finals which consolidates their Y8 learning journey in each language.
Year 9
September 2015: Year 9 students continue with their languages as established in their Year 8 curriculum: French & Spanish in extension groups – 3 lessons per fortnight of each language
All students complete various assessment tasks throughout the year to measure their achievements. The assessments focus on all four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
All students commence the GCSE course in French and/or Spanish. The objectives are for students to explore the success criteria required for a high GCSE grade. During the year students will complete a range of assessment tasks that feature in a GCSE course. Students will conclude Year 9 with The Finals containing listening, reading and writing tasks simulating the GCSE expectations. We believe the earlier focus on the GCSE skills will serve as a great foundation to build on in Year 10 and Year 11.
Current Year 10 & Year 11 We support students to undertake a GCSE in a foreign language in order to develop important learning skills that not only help them in other subjects, but also equip them for life. Therefore we encourage all students to seriously consider undertaking a language as an option at Key Stage Four.
The four areas of study in years 10 and 11 are: Out and About, Customer Service and Transactions, Personal information and Education, Work and Future plans.
During the course, students undertake 2 controlled assessments in writing, worth 30% of the final grade. They also undertake 2 controlled assessments in speaking, worth 30% of the final grade. As part of the final season students undertake a listening exam and a reading exam, both worth 20% of the final mark. The current exam board for both French and Spanish is AQA.
With increased foreign travel, the world is becoming a much smaller place and studying another language can only serve to enhance our experiences.
We endeavour to offer a great chance to learn a foreign language in a safe and exciting environment, but if you are still uncertain why not read some of the facts below!
Did you know?
- There are more than 2,700 languages and more than 7,000 dialects spoken in the world - at one time there were more than 15,000
- 885,000,000 people speak Mandarin Chinese
- 332,000,000 people speak Spanish
- 322,000,000 people speak English
- 189,000,000 people speak Bengali
- 182,000,000 people speak Hindi
The most difficult language to learn in the world is Basque, spoken in northern Spain and southwestern France. It is not related to any other language and is extremely old. - About 700 different languages are spoken in London alone. - 'Nu Shu' is a language spoken only by women in the Chinese province of Hunan. - Only one in four people throughout the world speaks English. That seems to us a great reason to learn a foreign language!