MFL: Key Stage 3 and 4
Department Overview
Learning a foreign language is a skill for life which will enhance both communication skills and employment prospects. It also provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster students’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world.
“A different language is a different vision of life.” — Federico Fellini.
The MFL department at Spalding Grammar School believes that learning another language raises an individual’s awareness of the multilingual and multicultural world in which we live, and it further introduces an international dimension to the students’ learning by enabling them to better understand their own culture and those of others.
The MFL curriculum has therefore been designed to meet the varying needs and interests of boys in years 7-11 whilst providing many opportunities for challenge and enrichment for them. Our overarching aim is to produce confident communicators who can successfully participate in an ever-expanding global economy.
"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things but learning another way to think about things." – Flora Lewis
Across Key Stages 3 and 4, the department is committed to using Dr Gianfranco Conti’s Extensive Processing Instruction model of language acquisition to develop our students’ knowledge of Phonics, Vocabulary and Grammar, and we have planned for frequent opportunities for recall, repetition, and reuse in a variety of contexts which will lead to mastery of the language being studied over time.
The teaching of the Target Language is focused on individual “chunks” of language rather than on individual words as this supports fluency and long-term memory recall. When communicating, 75% of the time is spent on listening and speaking, and 25% on reading and writing (Adler, R., Rosenfeld, L. and Proctor, R. (2001)), therefore each unit of language focusses first on listening and speaking before progressing to reading and writing.
Grammar plays a role in each topic and through interleaving the MFL curriculum, the complexity of the students’ knowledge increases as each year is completed. Grammar is taught both explicitly and implicitly throughout all years and is a running thread in all planning and teaching.
Depth has been built into the curriculum in place of breadth to challenge our students to achieve highly and to meet, if not surpass, their academic potential sooner and for a longer, more sustained period of time. Through this model of instruction, we intend to challenge our more able students to attain beyond their capabilities.
By ensuring that there is a mix of group and individual tasks set in class, closed and open-ended tasks and that the pace of lessons is varied, we can identify those who need support, based on how they are performing in that lesson, rather than relying on student performance in previous tests as the sole indicator for intervention.
The use of IT programmes such as The Language Gym, Sentence Builders and Text Activities are well-established for reinforcing newly acquired knowledge or for setting homework for supporting retainment in the longer-term memory.
French, German and Spanish are taught by a team of 4 specialist teachers with all students studying a modern foreign language until the end of year 11.
Currently, all students in years 11 study Spanish and all students in year 10 study French. Years 7, 8 and year 9 are divided into two cohorts. In year 7, the boys are taught either French or Spanish, in year 8, the students study either German or Spanish and in year 9, the boys are taught either French or Spanish. Moving forward, the school will offer Spanish, French and German on rotation as part of a 2-language model whereby Spanish remains the constant language on offer and either French or German is taught alongside it.
We aim to give students the opportunity to engage and excel in at least one language and a second language is offered at the end of year 9.
French, German and Spanish A levels are offered in Key Stage 5.
The MFL department also enriches our students’ language experience by offering extra-curricular activities such as trips abroad and celebration of the European Day of Languages, and the promotion of languages in the workplace through inviting guest speakers to school to talk to the boys about how knowledge of a modern foreign language has shaped their career choices.
During Flexy week in July 2023, Steve Eadon from Mingalaba (previously a football coach with Arsenal FC) worked with our year 9 boys in understanding the importance of having a foreign language in the workplace by discussing the opportunities that he had at Arsenal because he is multilingual. He also ran footballing skills workshops through the medium of Spanish. This is an event that will take place during Flexy week with year 9 in the future.