“The good quality of leadership throughout the school is driving the development of teaching and learning…”
Ofsted Inspection Nov 2007
Modern Foreign Languages
Modern Foreign Languages are taught in six well-equipped classrooms using the media of tape recorders, overhead projectors and video. One room now also has an interactive whiteboard and he other five rooms will shortly be similarly equipped.
Course Outline
All Modern Language courses are taught through a communicative approach underpinned by grammar and in line with the Modern Language Framework within the Key Stage 3 Strategy.
Course Content - Key Stage 3
All students begin in Year 7 with French. Classes are taught in tutor groups from the start, and students are put into groups according to ability at Christmas. The Department has invested in a brand new course for KS3, which covers themes such as Self, Family, Friends, Home and School. This is currently proving to be very motivational with students in their three lessons per week. After Christmas all students continue with French and most begin their second Modern Foreign Language (either German or Spanish). Students have three lessons per fortnight of each of their two foreign languages up to the end of Year 9. In Year 9 students must make their option choices. At the present time a significant proportion of students choose to continue to GCSE with at least one language.
Key Stage 4
The vast majority of students follow a GCSE course in Modern Languages (with examination board Edexcel). This involves four equal parts, one of which being coursework and students are given a good deal of support throughout. The national changes in the curriculum for 14 to 19 year olds mean that the Department is currently investigating alternative courses for students in Key Stage 4. These include Short Courses, Asset Languages and other vocational qualifications.
Beyond the Classroom The Language department organises trips abroad every year, and opportunities abound for students in each year group as they progress throughout the school. Past trips have included residential study courses for Year 11 students, a residential trip to Spain and Germany for Year 9 and 10 students and short visits to France for Year 7 and 8 students.
We also fully support the West Sussex scheme of enrichment for students, offering the chance to learn new languages from scratch or to deepen knowledge of pre-learnt languages.
Parental Support
It is not necessary for parents to have learnt a language in order to help their child progress in this subject. We very much appreciate support in helping to learn vocabulary and checking that homework is completed on time. Your child’s teacher will be pleased to inform you of any other way that you can help him/her to maximise his/her potential.
Homework
Homework will be regularly set and marked, but your child’s teacher will be happy to set further more challenging tasks if required. Links to useful websites for KS4 students can be found on the Tanbridge House Moodle.
KS4 ‘clinics’
| French : | Monday and Thursday | 3.30-4.20 | ML1/ML4 |
| Spanish : | Friday | 3.30-4.30 | ML3/ML4 |
| German : | Wednesday | 3.30-4.30 | ML5 |
KS3 challenge
‘Je joue au football’ – how can you add value to this sentence? What extra details can you add? What connectives do you know to add another sentence? How would you go about adding another sentence to achieve L5? - Why not show your teacher what you’ve come up with?
Fact
‘What’s the point of studying a language?’
French is spoken fluently by 128 million people worldwide, German has 126 million speakers and Spanish is spoken fluently by a whopping 332 million people!