French
French at Newfield Park
Purpose of Study
Learning a foreign language is a 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.
Aims
The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:
- 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 Newfield Park we provide many opportunities for children to extend their language learning. We work closely with local high schools, as well as other primary schools in the area, ensuring that what we do at Newfield Park compliments subsequent learning at secondary level.
As part of topic work, we have looked at the history and language of the local area, investigating "Black Country Speak". We have also looked further afield and have learned about aspects of the language and culture of Wales, listening to and learning from a real Welsh speaker who visited us in school! In History lessons, we have also looked at how the language of the Ancient Greeks and Anglo Saxons have affected language today.