Modern Foreign Languages

KEY STAGE 3

At Saint Pius we aim to attract students of all abilities to enjoy studying a language. We want students to develop and interest in, and a respect for other cultures. Experiences within the classroom and educational visit opportunities will give an insight into the religious and cultural lives of French or Spanish speaking societies and demonstrate the value of language learning as a lifelong skill. We would like to encourage students to broaden their horizons and to step beyond their own experience. Language teaching focuses on active learning and is underpinned by literacy and numeracy skills, with a specific focus on building vocabulary. Students will learn than different languages work in different ways and will gain the ability to apply linguistic concepts like gender, adjectival agreement and phonic sounds. Students will be presented with learning situations which will allow them to acquire and develop breadth and depth in the 4 key skill areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Y7

Students study one language in Year 7. This could be either French or Spanish. Students cover several topic areas including talking about yourself and family, pets, school, free time activities, the weather, my home, holidays and buying snacks. In addition, students work on listening and speaking skills, improving their confidence through repetition and identifying gist and detail in spoken passages, stories and songs. Students use familiar structures and vocabulary to build short paragraphs and identify main points in written texts.

Y8

Students develop their use of tenses, talking about holidays in the past and planning a visit. Students also participate in unrehearsed exchanges and organise their ideas and information into a sequence of paragraphs. They will begin to use a range of verb forms referring to the past, present and future.

Y9

Students work to achieve accreditation through the AQA FCSE exam The FCSE prepares students for GCSE with an introduction to simple translation from English into the target language (Writing), from the target language into English (Reading) and role-play (Speaking) as well as reading and listening. Students will understand longer sequences of speech and deal with unexpected responses in order to sustain conversation and discussion. They will use their knowledge of word order, phrases and clauses to understand and build a wider range of extended sentences. They will also be able to use and identify a range of tenses.

KEY STAGE 4

Working towards GCSE standard in languages students follow a course with 3 main themes, which are:

Theme 1: People and Lifestyle

Theme 2: Popular Culture

Theme 3: Communication and the World Around Us

By studying GCSE Spanish, students will develop their ability and ambition to communicate independently in speech and in writing with speakers of the language for authentic purposes and about subject which are meaningful and interesting to them. The GCSE in languages aims to build student confidence, enabling them to step beyond familiar cultural boundaries, develop new ways of seeing the world and better understand relationships between the foreign language and the English language.

Students build on their work in Key Stage 3, developing a wider vocabulary and a knowledge of more complex grammatical structures and phrases.

CURRICULUM TIME (per week)

KS3: 2 hours in Y7 and Y8, 1 hour in Y9

KS4: Early entry students do 3 hours in Y9 and Y10, Y10 Option students have 2 hours in Y10 and 3 hours in Y11.

GCSE ASSESSMENT

Students sit all their exams at the end of the course. The examination has two tiers, Foundation Tier (F) which allows up to Grade 5, and Higher Tier (H) allowing access up to Grade 9.

Listening: (25%) Written paper - F 35 mins, H 45mins

Speaking: (25%) Written paper - F 7-9 mins, H 10-12mins

Reading: (25%) Written paper - F 45 mins, H 1 hour

Writing: (25%) Written paper - F 1 hour 10 mins, H 1 hour 15 mins

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: Mrs. K. Hensby