Modern Foreign Language Intent

‘You live a new life for every language you speak. If you only know one language, you only live once’.

Czech proverb

At Our Lady of Lourdes, we aim to ensure that teaching languages fosters pupil’s curiosity and deepens their understanding of the world.  We want pupils to be able to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to speakers both in speech and writing. Our aim is to ensure that pupils speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say through discussion, questions and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation.

We provide opportunities for pupils to communicate for practical purposes and to lay a foundation for learning future languages thereby equipping pupils to study and work in other countries. As children progress we teach them to:

• listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding
• explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words
• engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
• speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures
• develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases
• present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences
• read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing
• appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
• broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary
• write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly
• describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing

We lay the foundation for their next stage of language learning.