MFL at the West Exmoor Federaiton
Within the West Exmoor Federation, learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity 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 pupils to study and work in other countries.
Intent
The national curriculum for modern foreign language aims to ensure that all children:
- 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.
Implementation
Within the West Exmoor Federation, all Key Stage 2 classes have access to a high-quality foreign languages curriculum using the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This progressively develops children’s skills in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons in Italian. Our children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes - building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.
Units, where possible and appropriate, are linked to cross curricular themes. Our children will build on previous knowledge gradually as their foreign language lessons continue to recycle, revise and consolidate previously learnt language whilst building on all four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Knowledge and awareness of required and appropriate grammar concepts will be taught throughout all units at all levels of challenge.
Impact
Through our teaching of MFL, we hope that our children will be able to:
- Understand and respond to spoken language, using simple phrases, sentences, the correct pronunciation and with the correct intonation.
- Understand written language and will be able to understand both the main points and finer detail of what they have read.
- Write at varying length using words, phrases and the correct conventions of the written language on familiar topics.
Strengthen the understanding of their own culture and identity alongside fostering an appreciation of that of others.