At Hovingham, we are in the fortunate position to have a special community of learners from a very diverse heritage. This means that most of our pupils learn English as a second language. Most are bi-lingual and many can adapt and tune into a range of lexicons linked to settlement and culture. There are many languages spoken by pupils as their first language and it is so important to recognise and value this as their core identity. Our pupils understand the challenges learning new languages bring but they embrace this challenge with enthusiasm.
The National Curriculum
“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” (National Curriculum 2014 programme of study for Languages).
For our pupils, learning a foreign language together, as a school community provides another lens to learning. It allows pupils to learn and experience this together.
The 2014 National Curriculum for Modern Foreign Languages aims to ensure that all children:
• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources.
• Are able to speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and that they are 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 content, for every year group, from Year 3 to Year 6, is carefully mapped out so that teachers know and understand what to teach and when to teach it. All sequences of learning are planned so that there is cohesion and key knowledge and skills are protected. It provides an appropriate balance of spoken and written language and lays the foundations for further foreign language teaching at KS3.