"Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."
Rita Mae Brown

Our goal is to create life-long linguists through the teaching of high-quality language. We want to instil a love of language learning and an awareness of other cultures.

Our curriculum ensures that, through carefully planned and sequenced lessons, pupils are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity. They find ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they continually improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation. We aim to give pupils a foundation for language learning that encourages and enables them to apply their skills to learning further languages at Key Stage 3.

SEND and MFL 

Students with SEN will only reach their full potential if they are given the opportunity to move outside their comfort zone and to learn new skills.” MFL classes do exactly that: they challenge learners to confront new languages, new cultures and different ways of thinking, all whilst improving multiple skill sets. 

The joy of language learning is the promotion of a new perspective: for example, teaching French or Spanish grammar in MFL lessons involves looking at the English equivalents and how they work, thus indirectly strengthening a students’ knowledge of their native language. This can also be seen in how vocabulary develops, by comparing the English words with target language equivalents or by finding cognates, which can also improve spelling in English. Even numeracy skills benefit from MFL lessons, through counting exercises and arithmetic activities in the target language. The beauty of all this is that it is done indirectly – the student learns multiple subjects all in one lesson, often without realising it!  

MFL classes lend themselves particularly well to SEN-friendly teaching strategies, such as the use of repetition and adopting a multi-sensory approach – for example, learning the alphabet and counting in a foreign language are both activities that can make great use of music and singing, a fun classroom activity that can boost confidence and memory. From flashcards and whiteboards to musical instruments, there are a range of audio, visual, and even kinaesthetic teaching styles that lend themselves to MFL teaching, thus boosting SEN students’ chances of success and more importantly, enjoyment!