MFL Curriculum Intent
In the MFL department, we have high aspirations for our students. Through our curriculum, we intend to give all students the knowledge, linguistic skills and cultural capital that they need. By learning about the language and culture of the target-language countries, we aim to hold a mirror to their own experiences and understand themselves better, while also developing them as people who are able to continue to learn languages and explore other cultures through their lifetime.
Throughout the curriculum, we seek to develop students’ linguistic capability by providing numerous opportunities to practise language and retrieve and build on prior learning. The curriculum enables students to understand and use written and spoken language, and express their opinions.
The thematic sequencing of our curriculum allows students to make connections between different topics. We build on language-learning skills already acquired as KS2, and continue to build on this throughout KS3 and KS4.
Year 7
The Y7 curriculum aims to build on the key language-learning skills developed at Key Stage Two, regardless of the language studied.
Students start by being able to express basic information about themselves, and throughout the year broaden this to talking about others and using increasingly longer sentences and talking about a range of topics, including their life at school and at home.
In terms of grammatical knowledge, students at the end of Y7 understand the concepts of gender agreement and are able to conjugate common verbs in the present tense, including being able to use common irregular forms. They are introduced to formal and informal language, and also common idioms, especially using the verb tener.
Year 8
In Year 8 students widen their horizons to look at holidays, as well as exploring the media, technology and fashion. This builds on their exploration of identity and leisure in Y7. In terms of their linguistic knowledge, students are able to use more irregular verb structures, as well as using 3 different time frames to talk about what they did in the past and will do in the future. They continue to develop their communicative skills through an enhanced focus on speaking in lessons.
Year 9
Through Year 9 students recall and build upon the language content acquired in the previous two years. They learn to express themselves more confidently using more complex language and structures, and widen their use of tenses to include using the conditional to say what they would do and the imperfect tense for descriptions. All of the modules of study build upon to previous learning in Y7 and Y8: Media builds on their learning about hobbies; Meeting People recaps family and relationships; Staying in Spain builds on their work around holidays.
GCSE
Our students’ learning journey in MFL so far has sought to equip them with key language and grammar they need to be able to communicate. GCSE builds these topics and language skills, to enable students to communicate more confidently and using increasingly more complex language. With their increasing level of maturity and linguistic competence, students are able to tackle more challenging topics ranging from the Environment to Poverty and Homelessness, whilst also looking at topics such as School, Family, Holidays and Hobbies in much more depth. They practise all 4 language skills of listening, reading, writing and speaking, to give them the best preparation possible for external examinations.