Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) at Southey Green Primary School 

Intent

At Southey Green Primary School, we believe that the learning of a foreign language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. It helps them to develop communication skills, including the key skills of speaking and listening, and extends their knowledge of how language works. Learning another language gives children a new perspective on the world, encouraging them to understand their own cultures, their own languages, and the culture and languages of others.

Learning a new language is key to securing our positions in the global community we live in and by setting a starting point in our school, we can aim towards achieving this objective. 

At Key Stage 2, our objective is to build children’s curiosity and to develop a passion for French and Mandarin.

The 2014 National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages aims to ensure that all children:
• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
• Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation.
• Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt.
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Implementation

All classes within KS2 will have access to a very high-quality foreign languages curriculum using the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This will progressively develop pupil skills in a foreign language through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons which will be taught by class teachers and/or a language specialist Mandarin teacher from within the Tapton Academy Trust.

Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes - building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.

Children will be taught how to listen and read longer pieces of text gradually in the foreign language and they will have ample opportunities to speak, listen to, read and write the language being taught with and without scaffolds, frames and varying levels of support.

Children will build on previous knowledge gradually as their foreign language lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously learnt language whilst building on all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Knowledge and awareness of required and appropriate grammar concepts will be taught throughout all units at all levels of challenge.

In addition to following the lessons provided in the Language Angels scheme of work and resources, teachers also do some of the following:

• Foreign language celebration assemblies.
• Cookery sessions of traditional foods from the country of the language being studied.
• Fashion shows demonstrating typical / traditional clothing from the country of the language being studied.
• Weather forecasts based on maps from the country of the language being studied.
• School celebrations of national feast days from the country of the language being studied when appropriate to facilitate a whole school approach to foreign language learning along with improved cultural awareness.