French
introducing french
Studying French is valuable to our children from Reception to Year 8 because it gives them the opportunity to:
- Become interested, even fascinated, by foreign languages, their speakers and culture, and to enjoy the feelings it can bring. The French culture is experienced by all of Year 7 when they go to France and spend a week’s immersion in the language.
- Form and express opinions in the target language and thus develop their moral and ethical awareness.
- Explore different social conventions, such as forms of address, as well as the ability to communicate and co-operate with speakers of foreign languages in an appropriate way.
- Gain new insights into differences in the way people live and opportunities to relate these to their own lifestyle and experience by increasing their awareness of other cultures.
- Use French as the principle means of communication within the classroom and beyond it, where opportunities exist.
- Develop their knowledge with growing confidence and competence to understand what they hear and read and express themselves in speech and writing.
- Develop their general learning skills.
We aim to teach in a way that provides opportunities for pupils to develop the key skills of:
- Communication: including listening, speaking, reading and writing in the target language.
- Acquiring knowledge and understanding of the target language.
- Seeing how language ‘works’ and finding links between languages.
- Communicating information in many different ways for many different purposes: audio, video, ICT, internet.
- Working with others in pairs, small groups as well as a whole class.
- Improving and developing their own language and performance by rehearsing and redrafting work as well as memorising, dealing with the unpredictable and using reference material.
- Problem-solving by adapting their knowledge for specific purposes.
- Language-learning so that they become increasingly independent learners and users of French by forming a sound basis for further study.