Languages
Bienvenue, Bienvenidos, Welcome to the Modern Foreign Languages department at St. Anthony’s Girls’ Catholic Academy!
INTENT
We believe that learning a language is an essential skill that all students should have in an increasingly globalised economy. Learning a foreign language enhances future job prospects and provides an enriching experience that improves intercultural understanding, communication skills and broadens horizons. That is why we believe that all pupils should leave school having a sound knowledge of a second language.
Our aims are to communicate our enthusiasm and passion for languages to pupils, to help them to realise their potential, gain access to other cultures and ways of life and enjoy their language learning experience. To achieve these goals we offer language lessons which are lively, interactive and fun to give our students the best opportunity to become independent language learners.
- To ensure that pupils can communicate in French and/or Spanish by the time they complete their MFL studies.
- To develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and also appreciate how these skills are interconnected.
- To help students understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
- To enable students to 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
- To ensure students write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
- To allow students to develop a sound grammatical knowledge, so that they invent structures for themselves and communicate in a range of different tenses.
- To develop confident, independent and reflective language learners.
- To raise pupils’ awareness of different cultures, giving them a broader perspective on the world.
- To highlight the career and enrichment opportunities available to students who can communicate in another language.
IMPLEMENTATION
See French and Spanish Language Pages for detailed information
MFLYr7-GCSE Curriculum Map St Anthony’s
MFL FCSE Curriculum Map St Anthony’s
KS5 MFL Curriculum Map Spanish
IMPACT
We know from all those who internally, and externally, review the work of our school that our pupils are cheerful, creative, conscientious and confident. Employers regularly tell us that our students are professional and act with honesty and integrity. Our school has been very successful with numerous external accreditations, including full accreditation of International School Status, acknowledging the importance of our international work, for the community and the individuals within it, over many decades. Our staff and students very much feel part of our Mercy community.
Our MFL curriculum helps our pupils to develop the detailed knowledge and skills required to progress to the next stage of education, employment or training. Our excellent teaching and learning programmes support all of our students to know, understand and remember more MFL content and linguistic knowledge and to achieve subject fluency, enabling them to grow and develop as students of Modern Foreign Languages. Pupils understand the department intent and implementation thanks to their course induction. Regular oral and written feedback is provided to ensure all students are aware of their position on the learning journey, their strengths and targets, which they consider when taking their next steps.
We believe that the MFL curriculum provision at St. Anthony’s Catholic Academy leads to a mastery in key content knowledge and grammar acquisition as well as skills relating to listening, speaking reading and writing in the foreign language studied. We believe pupils are also able to develop their cultural knowledge and understanding, allowing them a heightened cultural awareness of the globalised world in which they live. Through the MFL course provision, pupils are able to develop their confidence in communicating in the foreign language studied, with fluency and spontaneity across all four language learning skills.
Staff in the MFL department support subject specific literacy and numeracy for all our pupils to help them succeed in their studies and they aim to holistically develop the gifts and talents of each individual within a caring, compassionate, charitable and challenging Christian environment.
Our impactful MFL curriculum develops students with the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding to have a positive impact within family, friendship groups, school/college, university, the workplace and the wider community. Our wide-ranging and broad-based curriculum offer, and varied extended curricular opportunities within MFL, provide an opportunity for everyone.
We know that our students are reliable, responsible, resilient and radical individuals who are ready to use their talents positively wherever life may take them. Generations of students have chosen St. Anthony’s over the decades and centuries. We are extremely proud of our alumni, many of whom are regular contributors to our school community as it continues to grow and develop. Many families have fourth or fifth generation connections to our school and many staff have given decades of service, such is the impact of being part of this school community.
Everyone in our community is aware of what it means to be an Antonian: to pursue excellence, to build community, to show concern for those who may be disadvantaged and to particularly support the education of women and girls. We have definitely had an impact within this “city by the sea”, and well beyond it, especially working so closely with key international partner schools, since we were founded in 1904. We are confident that our distinctive ethos will continue to have a big impact as it is carried forward by future generations of Antonians.
