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.
Our A-level in Spanish or French is here to encourage students to: enhance their linguistic skills and promote and develop their capacity for critical thinking on the basis of their knowledge and understanding of the language, culture and society of the country or countries where the language is spoken.
Our approach is to focus on how French or Spanish-speaking society has been shaped socially and culturally and how it continues to change. In the first year, aspects of the social context are studied, together with aspects of the artistic life of French or Spanish-speaking countries. In the second year further aspects of the social background are covered, this time focusing on matters associated with multiculturalism. Students also study aspects of the political landscape including the future of political life in the French or Hispanic world by focusing on young people and their political engagement.
Students will develop their knowledge and understanding of themes relating to the culture and society of countries where French or Spanish is spoken, and their language skills. They will do this by using authentic spoken and written sources in the language they are studying.
The choice of works (literary texts and films) offers opportunities to link with the themes so that, for example, in Spanish they will study El coronel which could be linked to the sub-theme Modern and traditional values while the film Volver could be connected to the sub-theme Equal rights . Whereas in French they will study No et Moi which links to the theme of Life for the marginalised and can be connected with the film La Haine which also deals with immigration and marginalisation.