Modern Foreign Language - French

Learning a foreign language is a necessary part of being a member of a multi-cultural society and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster children’s curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable children to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping children to study and work in other countries.

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. can 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.

At Purley C of E Primary School:

Children have weekly lessons in French throughout Key Stage 2, using the resources and units of work from Language Angels. We intend to use the Language Angels scheme of work and resources to ensure we offer a relevant, broad, vibrant and ambitious foreign languages curriculum, that will inspire and excite our pupils using a wide variety of topics and themes. All pupils will be expected to achieve their full potential by encouraging high expectations and excellent standards in their foreign language learning - the aim being that pupils will feel willing and able to continue studying languages beyond key stage 2. A strong emphasis will be placed on developing their Speaking and Listening skills. These will be embedded and further developed as they move through Upper KS2, alongside Reading and Writing, gradually progressing onto more complex language concepts and greater learner autonomy.

It is intended that when children leave Purley Primary, they will have a natural curiosity and confidence to explore, other countries, cultures and languages, accepting that, in a multi-lingual society it is a valuable skill to be able to communicate effectively with others in another language. They will be engaged and prepared to continue language learning at Secondary School.