At Marshland High School, Modern Foreign Languages are an important part of the curriculum. In today’s multicultural and diverse society, it is vital that our young people grow up with an understanding of other cultures, which is helped through studying a Modern Foreign Language. We teach both French and German, working alongside the other schools in West Norfolk Academies Trust, sharing expertise, ideas and opportunities to offer our students high quality teaching.

Our Aims

Learning a Foreign Language widens our perspectives and broadens our appreciation of wider culture.  We aim to provide our students with an understanding of cultural diversity, through learning about customs and ideas as well as learning to communicate in the target language of French or German.

Building confidence in our learners is a top priority for us at Marshland High School.  Students are encouraged by positive reinforcement of their efforts, as well as being guided to appreciate the efforts of their peers – we emphasise the enjoyment of speaking a different language and having a go.

Key Stage 3

In KS3 all lessons involve a mixture of the four Key Skills:

·         Speaking - Students practise speaking from the very first lesson, beginning with greetings and short sentences about themselves. Speaking may be to an individual, a small group or even the whole class. Encouragement and praise helps to build confident communicators.

·         Listening - Being able to understand what is said to us is hugely important. Students learn the skills for effective listening, for understanding what they hear in the classroom, as well as from recordings of real-life situations, videos and songs. The students also listen to a range of films.

·         Reading - Our students are taught a variety of techniques to help with understanding of written texts. We use a wide range of texts to allow students to develop their skills in reading. These include: blogs, emails, brochures, leaflets and menus – very useful when you are on holiday!

·         Writing - Writing in the target language is a very important skill and one which begins with writing about ourselves. Everyone has plenty of ideas about this! As we progress, students learn to write in more depth and about other people too, such as idols and their taste in music and films.

Key Stage 4

Choosing to study a Modern Foreign Language at GCSE is a way of ensuring that your options for the future are as wide as possible.

GCSE French and German are tiered exams, with a Foundation and a Higher tier. There are four parts to each exam, which reflect the four key skills in MFL, and each part is worth 25% of the total: 

·         Speaking - Students prepare a chosen topic for conversation and are asked to speak about other topics they are given on prompt cards. 

·         Listening - Students listen to a range of texts and conversations, answering questions in both English and the target language.

·         Reading - A range of texts in the target language assess the student’s understanding, through questions in both English and the target language.

·         Writing - A choice of tasks allows students to write on a topic in a range of forms (letter, email, etc.). Picture description is also used.

Trips

We also offer our students additional opportunities to give them a wider experience of how important languages are and how much fun they can be too! For German students we offer a German exchange programme with a Grammar school in Spaichingen in Southwest Germany. For French students we offer a trip to the Château de Warsy and Disneyland Paris..