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.
Year 7 and 8 Curriculum
Students are taught in form groups for 2 periods per week.
The Year 7 and 8 course uses the NCELP (National Centre for Excellence for Learning Pedagogy) scheme of work built on the teaching and learning of phonics, grammar and vocabulary.
During our weekly phonics sessions, Year 7 and 8 students learn the most frequent French sounds to enable them to recognise and pronounce all the words encountered during the year. As far as grammar is concerned, Year 7 cover the present tense of regular and some common irregular verbs.They also study common grammar rules like genders, agreements, position of adjectives, etc… Year 8 revisit those grammatical points and build on prior knowledge to develop an understanding and use of modal verbs, question forms, the negation, word order and future intentions. By the end of Year 7, students have studied and encountered around 360 of the most frequent French words and they are able to apply this knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and phonics to their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. They double that number of words by the end of Year 8.
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.
Year 9 Curriculum
Students are taught in form groups for 2 periods per week.
Year 9 students follow the Allez! 2 coursebook to consolidate and extend the knowledge and skills acquired in Year 7 and 8. The curriculum is topic based but also incorporates phonics, grammar and vocabulary as in previous years. Year 9 is a key year in the learning of French because it is when the future tense is combined with the present and the 2 past tenses. This gives students the ability to express ideas and opinions on a number of topics, such as personal relationships and healthy lifestyles both orally and in writing. By then, Year 9 students have the linguistic ability to expand their creativity and work on and present their own project on the topic of media. They are also able to translate short written texts accurately into French as well as provide an accurate English translation of short, suitable material.
Through their media project, Year 9 students have the chance to discover French speaking musicians and singers, French-speaking cinema and tv series. This is also the final year of our study into the work of Prévert with the poem called “Le chat et l’oiseau”.
Year 8 Trip to the Opal Coast
