Modern Foreign Languages – French

“If you talk to a person in a language they understand, that goes to their head. If you talk to them in their own language, that goes to their heart.”

Nelson Mandela

Learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides our children with a window into the country and culture. A high-quality language education fosters children’s curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world.

At Abbey Primary School, modern foreign languages teaching enables children to express their ideas and thoughts in French and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It also provides opportunities for the children to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read in the French language, using phonics as the basis for doing so.

By learning French, our children gain the key knowledge, skills and confidence upon which to build as they learn more complex content in secondary school. In addition, their success and the enjoyment of doing so will prepare them for learning further languages in the future.

The National Curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

1. Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources

2. Speak with increasing 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

3. Write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt

4. Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Our curriculum places a strong emphasis on developing children’s speaking and listening skills. These are further developed and embedded in Upper KS2, alongside reading and writing, gradually progressing onto more complex language concepts and greater learner autonomy.

When children leave Abbey Primary School, it is or aim that they will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore other languages, countries and their cultures.

Implementation:

At Abbey Primary School, we have chosen to use the ‘Language Angels’ scheme of learning to deliver an authentic and progressive French curriculum. Children have the equivalent of 30 minutes French teaching per week, throughout Key Stage 2. In line with the National Curriculum for MFL, pupils at Abbey Primary School are taught to:

1. Listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding

2. Explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words

3. Engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help

4. Speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures

5. Develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases

6. Present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences

7. Read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing

8. Appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language

9. Broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary

10. Write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clear

11. Describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing

12. Understand basic grammar appropriate to the language being studied, including (where relevant): feminine, masculine and neuter forms and the conjugation of high-frequency verbs; key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.

The impact of our Modern Foreign Language curriculum is measured using the following approaches to assessment:

- Observing children speaking and listening in French – formatively within lessons

- Images and videos of children completing speaking and listening activities

- Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice)

- Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum to parents

- Continual revisitation of learning, enabling children to apply the taught skills to a variety of different contexts, showing independence with their learning

- Key questions as an integral part of lessons