“You can never understand one language until you understand at least two” - Geoffrey Willans

Intent

At St James’, all pupils will develop a genuine interest and positive curiosity about foreign languages, finding them enjoyable and stimulating. Learning a second language will also offer pupils the opportunity to explore relationships between language and identity, develop a deeper understanding of other cultures and the world around them with a better awareness of self, others and cultural differences. All of our pupils will be working towards becoming life-long language learners.

Implementation

We have created a dynamic programme of study that will ensure the foreign language knowledge of our pupils progresses within each academic year. The four key language learning skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing will be taught and all necessary grammar are covered in an age-appropriate way across Key Stage Two. This will enable pupils to use and apply their learning in a variety of contexts, laying down solid foundations for future language learning and also helping the children improve overall attainment in other subject areas. In addition, the children will be taught how to look up and research language they are unsure of and they will have a bank of reference materials to help them with their spoken and written tasks going forward. This bank of reference materials will develop into a reference library to help pupils recall and build on previous knowledge throughout their primary school language learning journey. All classes will have access to a very high-quality foreign languages curriculum using the Language Angels scheme of work and resources. This will progressively develop pupil skills in foreign languages through regularly taught and well-planned weekly lessons in Key Stage Two and introduced in Key Stage One. Children will progressively acquire, use and apply a growing bank of vocabulary, language skills and grammatical knowledge organised around age-appropriate topics and themes - building blocks of language into more complex, fluent and authentic language.