Between year 7 and year 13, we offer French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian at SJBC. The knowledge of English added to at least one Foreign Language broadens the horizon of our students and equips them with strong tools in their future career. Indeed, French is the official language in 29 countries, Spanish in 21 countries and Portuguese is currently the fifth most spoken language in the world!
In KS3, the students start to build the foundations of the language studied (useful when travelling and communicating with our multicultural society - RUAH!). We aim at mastering the tenses (compared to “just learning”) from KS3, ensuring that all students can speak/write/read/translate/understand 3 tenses by the end of y9. Given that those are the exact skills students will be assessed on at GCSE and at A Level, that learning routine facilitates the transition KS3-KS4 and KS4-KS5 and strengthens the grammatical abilities.
In KS4, students consolidate their learning, deepen their knowledge of tenses by studying a variety of them and they are being trained specifically on how to succeed their GCSE exam, in addition to developping their ambition as possible future language specialists at KS5. Extra GCSE in Home languages are encouraged (including Polish, Urdu, Turkish, …).
In KS5, students sharpen their advanced knowledge on the language studied, its grammar, its specific advanced vocabulary, its culture, but they also develop some transferable skills (such as inference), which will become the students’ assets in their future career fields, whatever the specialty they will be choosing after A level. We are forming language specialists who are skillful citizens.
Our curriculum provision is designed to meet the aspirations, interests and needs of our pupils. The learning opportunities allow students to gain the qualifications needed to progress to college, university, an apprenticeship or their chosen career. The topics covered throughout KS3 ankd KS4 refer to the GCSE content and are being studied more and more in-depth year after year. They refer to the students’ bubble (who they are, their family and friends), then enable them to think beyond their bubble (the world around them -RUAH) and finally help to develop their critical thinking (the differences between England and other countries, their health, , their current studies, their aspirations). In KS5, the topics deepen the understanding of the evolution of the worlds’ problematics (changes in the family structure for example) and involve other subjects (such as History, Drama, Politics) plus additional skills (analytical skills through the study of a movie and a novel).
The GCSE exam board specifications are AQA (French, Spanish, Italian & Polish) and Edexcel (Portuguese). The A Level ones are AQA (Spanish, Polish) and Edexcel (French, Portuguese, Italian, Home languages). Students’ positive outcomes, enjoyment (RUAH), personal development & open-mindedness (RUAH) are the drive of the MFL department, part of the EBacc. We are proud to support students, regardless of their ability and backgrounds. The MFL department also aims at enhancing the employability of the students’ profile.
