If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.
- Nelson Mandela
At St Gregory's, learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. Our high quality languages education fosters students’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. Our teaching enables students to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing.
Teaching focusses on developing the breadth and depth of students' competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing, based on a sound foundation of core grammar and vocabulary. We aim for students to understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources. We encourage them to speak in the target language to develop their confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation. We work a lot on writing varying length, purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt so that students can be well prepared for the AQA MFL GCSE specification that we study at Key Stage 4.
Our language teaching provides the foundation for learning further languages, equipping students to study and work in other countries and be global citizens.
All students do one language at KS3 either French, Spanish or Mandarin ( Excellence Program). They start in Year 7 and carry on with it until Year 9.
The MFL Faculty aim to cover topics and grammar points which will be relevant to GCSE.
The curriculum for languages at KS3 aims to ensure that all students:
Course Code: AQA 8673
Exam Board Specification: www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/languages/gcse/chinese-spoken-mandarin-8673
We use the AQA examination board to assess students’ knowledge and understanding in each of the four skills. The curriculum is divided in three distinct themes of four units each; covered over the 2 years of the course.
Students are expected to understand and provide information and opinions about these themes relating to their own experiences and those of other people, including people in countries/communities where Mandarin is spoken. Students will also study grammar to gain an in-depth and strong understanding of tenses and structures.
It is a linear course which means all the exams are taken in Year 11. Papers are tiered which mean students are either entered for Foundation or Higher.
Our detailed curriculum map outlines the knowledge studied.