The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:
- understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
- 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
- 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.
The MFL (French) curriculum develops the priorities for pupils at Wolsingham Primary School in the following ways:
Basic skills – Our basic skills focus is evident in the progression that is reinforced and built up on each year. We ensure our children have a confident understanding of basic vocabulary such as numbers, days of the week, months of the year and basic conversation such as introducing themselves.
Resilience and Perseverance – We develop resilient language learners by ensuring children are gaining the confidence to speak French to their peers. Lessons encourage all children to participate and have a go.
Social Awareness – We ensure that pupils gain an understanding of a culture different to their own. Through learning French, our pupils explore French culture and draw comparisons to their own. This provides an opportunity to understand, appreciate and celebrate diversity and promote respect and tolerance of others. We promote the idea that languages are for life and have the potential to open doors in their future.
Knowledge – It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written French, confidence to speak in French with others and know how important other languages can be in their future.
