Intent

"Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils 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 pupils to study and work in other countries." (National Curriculum)

The skills, knowledge and understanding gained through learning a language contribute to the development of children’s oracy and literacy and to their understanding of their own culture and those of others. 

At Southroyd Primary School, we feel that the earlier a child is exposed to a foreign language, the faster the language in question is acquired. We believe that the early acquisition of French will facilitate the learning of other foreign languages later in life. We will prepare children for the KS3 language curriculum to enable them to transfer confidently and successfully.

Implementation

At Southroyd, our children learn French language as part of our curriculum. We have regular French lessons in Years 3 to Year 6.

We also stage International Language Day, and celebrate the importance of learning a foreign language. In the past, Miss Tomlinson has shared her German, Mr Hall has shared his French, Miss Syan has shared her Spanish and Mrs Cox has shared some of her Afrikaans.

At the same time, children could listen to a number of parents who came to school to celebrate their own special languages.

The school uses the "Primary Languages Network" scheme of work to support the teaching and learning of French. This provides clear progression for the development of speaking and listening and vocabulary acquisition. There are resources to support the teaching and learning opportunities for pupils.

They use a variety of the following techniques to encourage children to have an active engagement with French:

• Role-play – these should relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• Reading and writing quality materials.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.

Impact

Through the high quality teaching of French, we will see the impact of the subject in the following ways:

· Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.

· Children will develop their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.

· Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the French culture.

· Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.

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