Modern Foreign Languages

Our languages curriculum is coherent, planned, sequenced, progressive, challenging and aims to meet all the requirements of the National Curriculum from year 3 -  6. It gives opportunities for in mastery languages (Chinese), helping all children to aspire, to achieve the best they can in all the learning they explore.

Learning a foreign language is liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils 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. (National Curriculum 2014)

The learning of a foreign language provides a valuable educational, social and cultural experience for our pupils. It helps them to develop communication skills including key skills of speaking and listening and extends their knowledge of how language works. Learning another language gives children a new perspective on the world, promotes global citizenship and encourages them to understand their own cultures and those of others.

At St Paul’s, we aim 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 Chinese
• acknowledge and appreciate their own cultures and Chinese culture.

Teaching is in line with the recommendations of the National Curriculum, with modifications in place which allow for the individual and differentiated needs of the children, and the characteristics of Chinese language.

In order to meet the above aims and for children to deepen their understanding of how a language works, all children should be taught 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
• 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
• read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing
• appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language
• describe people, places, things and actions orally and in writing
• understand basic grammar appropriate to the Chinese language, including key features and patterns of the language; how to apply these, for instance, to build sentences; and how these differ from or are similar to English.