The French Department
Our vision and aims:
“Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality language education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world”. We strongly agree with this vision of language learning outlined by the Department for Education national curriculum of England.
As more than 200 million people speak French on the five continents, our aim in the French Department is to share with students our passion for French and the French-speaking world. In a globalised world where French is the second most widely learned language after English, the ability to speak French is a huge advantage on the international job market.
Right from the outset, we encourage our students to begin communicating with confidence and enthusiasm. In our lessons, we challenge students to communicate with one another in French, to read authentic materials, to understand native speakers and to write extended pieces to express themselves. As French is the international language of Cooking, Fashion, Theatre, the Visual Arts and Dance, we provide as many opportunities as possible for our students to experience French culture and to understand the importance of French outside the classroom.
KS3 Curriculum
Students are taught in form groups for 2 periods per week.
The Year 7, 8 and 9 course uses Vif 1 and 2 which is a brand-new Key Stage 3 French course packed with interesting and fun global francophone topics that will inspire curiosity amongst students and encourage a lifelong love of languages. Grammar is introduced in a logical order with regular recycling of structures to embed knowledge. Vocabulary focuses on high-frequency, transferable and inclusive words that students really need. During our weekly phonics sessions, Year 7, 8 and 9 students learn the most frequent French sounds to enable them to recognise and pronounce all the words encountered during the year.
Year 7 students also take part in the Spelling Bee House Competition as well as the Lingofest competition where they study one of Jacques Prévert’s most famous poems, “Le cancre”, thus meeting the National Curriculum ambitious aim to “read great literature in the original language”. In Year 8, students extend their knowledge of Prévert’s poetry through the reading and understanding of “En sortant de l’école”. Both year groups have the opportunity to learn about festivals, customs and traditions in the French speaking world such as Christmas, the Epiphany, the “Poisson d’Avril”, the 14th July, etc… Finally, they find out about French cinema and experience at least one French speaking film each year in its original version with subtitles.
In July of Year 8, there is a centre-based residential trip to the Opal Coast in Northern France where students have the opportunity to take part in a number of cultural visits and linguistic activities.
In Year 9, the knowledge of phonics is further developed by activities focused on two or more sound-spelling correspondences (SSC) as well as more complex sounds and intonation.
Year 9 frequently revisit grammatical points learnt in Year 7 and 8 and build on prior knowledge to develop an understanding and use of the perfect tense and the imperfect tense, more irregular present tense verbs and the future tense. Students learn to manipulate the language to produce more and more complex language, providing an excellent base to support French GCSE study.
Our Year 9 students extend their cultural knowledge of the francophone world through various super-curricular activities and this is also the final year of our study into the work of Prévert with the poem called “Soyez polis” which was so ahead of its time in tackling the topic of the environment.
