“To learn another language is to have one more window

from which to look at the world”

Chinese Proverb

Bevois Town Primary school is exceptionally proud to serve a diverse ethnic, cultural and religious community where over 75% of our children speak English as an additional language. By the time that many of our children leave us, they are truly bi-lingual. As such, we value and embrace all languages spoken in our school community. We encourage children to speak their native languages at home and celebrate these languages in school as they are a vital part of our cultural identities. Learning another language is not a genetic gift but a social gift; it also supports the development of neural pathways that would otherwise remain dormant. 

As a school, we have chosen French as the Modern Foreign Language to be taught throughout Key Stage 2. French is an extremely useful language to learn with over 275 million speakers worldwide. It is the second most spoken language in the world after English and is spoken in every continent. French is also considered to be a ‘gateway language’ meaning that it shares many similarities to other languages including Spanish and Portuguese.  Our intent is that our carefully crafted French curriculum will foster pupils’ curiosity and help towards preparing them for an increasingly globalised world in which intercultural competence is essential. 

Our aims for teaching a Modern Foreign Language reflect those of the National Curriculum. Pupils should:

• 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.

At Bevois Town Primary School we use Language Angels to support the teaching and learning of French and empower both teachers and learners with pronunciation and clear progression in French. Our curriculum aims to offer a relevant, broad, vibrant and ambitious foreign languages curriculum that will inspire and excite our pupils using a wide variety of topics and themes. All pupils will be expected to achieve their full potential by encouraging high expectations and excellent standards in their foreign language learning – preparing the foundations for future learning at secondary school.

The four key language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing will be taught and all necessary grammar will be covered in an age-appropriate way across Years 3 - 6. This will enable pupils to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning and also helping the children improve overall attainment in other subject areas.

Our ultimate aim is that our language teaching will provide the foundation for pupils learning further languages and inspire pupils to become lifelong language learners.