Modern Foreign Languages – MFL

It is our intent at Chilwell to provide all of our children with a Modern Foreign Languages curriculum, which develops their love of learning about other languages and culture. Through learning a foreign language, we aim to build on children’s ‘cultural capital’ so that children develop a deeper knowledge, understanding and greater tolerance of the rich diversity between cultures in our community, the UK and wider world.

We are committed to ensuring that proficiency in another language facilitates children to interpret, create and exchange meaning within and across cultures. We aim to develop the children’s language skills, in hope that this will open further opportunities later in life.

Curriculum Implementation:

We follow the primary MFL scheme of work from “Language Angels” that covers the aims of the Languages programme of study as stated in the National Curriculum 2014. The scheme has an equal balance of spoken and written Spanish and the resources provided model good pronunciation which supports non-Spanish speaking staff in teaching it.

Children are first introduced to foreign languages from Year 2 and receive a weekly 30-minute lesson. This supports the children to develop early language vocabulary acquisition skills that supports their understanding of the patterns of language and how these differ from, or are similar to, English.

The teaching of Spanish in years 2 – 4 and Mandarin (taught by an experienced languages teacher) in years 5-6, provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lay the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.

Modern Foreign Language lessons provide a variety of sources to model the language, using games, stories and songs to maximise enjoyment and make as many connections to real life situations as possible. We focus predominantly on speaking and listening in KS1 – gradually developing skills in reading and writing as they progress into LKS2 in preparation for foreign language teaching in KS3.

Each lesson, children build on the skills that they have already learnt and develop new ones through a range of fun, exciting and engaging activities: pupils’ written learning is evidenced in individual folders and the spoken elements of language learning captured via Seesaw learning platform.

Curriculum Impact:

Here at Chilwell, we have a very diverse make up of our school with over forty languages being spoken. Through our MFL curriculum the children become more aware of how language structure differs from one language to another. The children thoroughly enjoy learning languages and we aim to inspire children to develop a love of the target language.

As well as children developing their language and communication through the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. The broad nature of topics introduced through the ‘Language Angels scheme’ help children to develop tolerance and understanding for people from other cultures.

We aim for our children to transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and with the hope that they are prepared to continue and develop their language skills.

Careers linked to Modern Foreign Languages:

Teacher (Secondary, specialist teacher, english as a foreign language)

Translator

Interpreter

International aid/development worker

Broadcast Journalist

Business, logistics and financial services