MFL

By the end of year 13, students will be able to express themselves with confidence and fluency about a variety of topics, ranging from cultural and historical events, such as the fall of the Berlin wall or the French occupation to topics such as diversity. Students conduct independent research in the language studied and effectively condense and present information about their chosen topic. In the past these have ranged from German Rap and the German Democratic Republic as seen from a feminist perspective to drug taking in the Tour De France, French politics and cuisine and globalisation to French history / football. Students’ accent and intonation should be near authentic. Students will have a solid grammatical foundation that would set them up for successful university study. They will be able to access a wide range of authentic materials including literature and film and will be able to understand both in detail and gist. To date these have included Ich fuehl’ mich so fifty-fifty and Goodbye Lenin in German and in French No et Moi and Intouchables. They will be able to successfully translate challenging passages with topic-specific vocabulary and higher-level grammatical structures from and into the language studied. Students will be able to write coherent and analytical essays in response to film and literature in the language studied, focusing on character, theme, style and technique and social context. This culminates in year 13 students being culturally aware, linguistically curious, grammatically competent and excellent communicators.

By the end of year 12, students will have moved beyond the GCSE curriculum and talking only about themselves, to discussing issues from the countries of the language that they study. They are beginning to express themselves orally with some confidence and fluency and they will be able to discuss topics with greater cultural nuance and accuracy. Their accent and intonation should be increasingly authentic. Students will be working towards mastery of the grammatical concepts required for successful A Level study. Students will be growing in confidence in accessing authentic materials both in listening and reading. They will be able to understand the gist and some key details. They will be starting to tackle translation tasks from and into the language studied with greater accuracy and more topic-specific vocabulary. Students will be introduced to studying a piece of literature or film, including building essay-writing skills and their analytical expertise in the language. Our ambition for year 12 students is to become more grammatically aware, confident communicators beyond the normal realms of GCSE and broaden their cultural horizons.

By the end of year 11, students will feel confident in giving their opinion and speaking about themselves and their experiences in a variety of tenses. This could include talking about school, the world of work, holidays, their family and their home and local area. By this point, students should be confident in pronouncing a wide range of complex vocabulary, with an overall authentic accent and intonation. Students will be confident in using and recognising a minimum of three tenses and applying other grammatical concepts, such as adjective endings and word order. They will be able to access more complex and extended texts and infer meaning when listening and reading. Students will be able to write on a range of themes, applying prior grammar knowledge accurately and expressing and justifying their opinion. They will be able to translate on a sentence or short paragraph level with good attention to detail from and into the language. Year 11 students will be confident, independent and spontaneous communicators, aware of and able to apply fundamental grammatical knowledge in a range of linguistic and cultural contexts.

By the end of year 10, students will have built upon their prior learning and will be increasingly confident in giving their opinion and using different tenses to express themselves. By this point, students will be perfecting their pronunciation and developing an increasingly authentic accent and intonation. Students will be growing in confidence in using and recognising a minimum of three time frames and applying more complex structures, such as modal verbs. They will be beginning to access more complex texts and to extract key messages, often using inference, when listening and reading. Students will have built upon their grammatical foundations to write in more detail and with greater accuracy about a range of topics. They will be able to translate sentences or short paragraphs with increasing accuracy. Year 10 students will have made tangible grammatical progress and broadened their vocabulary on topics revisited from Key Stage 3, such as family and free time, and will demonstrate a resilient approach towards success at MFL GCSE.

By the end of year 9, students will be using three tenses to speak about a range of topics. They will be able to express and justify opinions with confidence using clear pronunciation. They will be able to extract key information when listening and reading about a range of topics. They will have developed their ability to write extended texts, which demonstrate application of grammatical points and greater complexity in the inclusion of varied vocabulary and language features. Students will be able to translate single sentences into the target language and short paragraphs into English in preparation for GCSE. By the end of Year 9, students should have a solid foundation of grammar and vocabulary to be successful learners at MFL GCSE, as well as having developed their resilience and independence. They will have broadened their cultural horizons through studying topics using French or German film and music.

By the end of year 8, students will be using two tenses to speak about a range of topics, for example holidays and food and drink. They will be increasingly confident when pronouncing both familiar and unfamiliar language, using phonics. They will be able to express opinions and give a simple justification. Students will be growing in confidence when applying grammatical concepts such as adjective endings and word order. They will be able to deal with texts and audio extracts in two tenses and extract key information about topics covered via inferencing and decoding. Year 8 students will be able to write in more detail, using a variety of pronouns and justified opinions. They will have begun to develop some GCSE skills, such as translation, extended writing and the ability to speak spontaneously. By the end of year 8, students will have a solid foundation in the language they have chosen to study in Year 9, including basic grammatical knowledge and a broadening vocabulary.

By the end of year 7, students will be able to describe themselves, answer basic questions and express simple opinions about themselves, their families and friends. They will have some confidence in pronouncing words, recognising key phonics and reading aloud. Students will have developed greater knowledge of fundamental grammatical concepts, including identifying nouns, adjectives and verbs. They will be able to answer questions and pick out information in listening and reading. They will be able to produce short texts including varied language features and will be beginning to use longer sequences of language. They will be beginning to understand the importance of accuracy, including spelling and accents. Our aim is to empower our Year 7 students in their first year of language learning, for them to develop their curiosity about the culture and language, and to feel confident in their progress and their growing communicative skills.