Purpose and Provision
Download a copy of the Modern Foreign Language Departments Purpose and Provision document here.
Curriculum Map
Download a copy of the Spanish Curriculum Map document here.
In an increasingly interconnected and multicultural world, the value of learning a language cannot be overstated. The common belief that “everyone speaks English” is misleading. In reality, the vast majority of the global population live in countries where English is not the native language, and a significant proportion do not speak English at all.
It is also a misconception that language learning leads only to careers in teaching or translation. While these remain important pathways, language skills are highly transferable and open doors to a wide range of professions, including business, journalism, the armed forces, hospitality, and finance. In this sense, languages enhance opportunities across almost all career trajectories.
Beyond employability, language learning fosters a deeper cultural awareness, helping students to understand how linguistic heritage connects people across the world. It broadens horizons, enables meaningful communication with individuals from diverse backgrounds, and contributes positively to students’ long-term economic prospects.
Key Stage 3
Upon arriving at the school, pupils study either French or Spanish and benefit from four language lesson per fortnight. Whichever language a pupil begins with (s)he will continue learning until the end of Year 9.
In their MFL lessons, pupils are given opportunities to practise the four key skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing within a variety of contexts, using a variety of teaching methods and resources. Pupils are also taught the necessary grammar structures and skills including past, present and future tenses, and translation in preparation for the GCSE course. At St Christopher’s, language teaching is best described as engaging and situational, with teachers developing their pupils’ confidence through regular exposure to the language, be it speaking or hearing it as often as possible.
Grammatical competence, fluency and pronunciation are mastered through a variety of engaging topics including, but not limited to; personal information, local area, food and drink, school life, free time and interests, target language film and music, holidays, healthy living and career aspirations.
Grammar underpins the MFL curriculum, rather than topic areas or standalone vocabulary. Students are taught to see language as a system, understanding how its parts link together rather than learning isolated chunks.
The curriculum is deliberately structured so that key grammatical ideas are introduced in a logical order. These core concepts act as stepping stones, helping students unlock deeper understanding. They are then revisited regularly in different contexts, allowing knowledge to build securely over time.
By drawing attention to recurring patterns in the language, students become more independent learners. This approach supports them in adapting and shaping the language themselves, leading to more confident, flexible and creative communication. Finally, this is achieved through a pedagogical approach which is centred around retrieval practice. The ability to speak while thinking, and in many cases, without needing to think, reduces cognitive overload and develops only when students can reliably recall knowledge from long-term memory.
Assessment at Key Stage 3
Pupils are assessed regularly throughout Key Stage 3 through a structured programme of Milestone Assessments and an End of Year Assessment, designed to support long-term retention and secure progress. Milestone Assessments take place five times across the academic year and focus on core skills, including transcription, reading, translation, grammar and listening. Each assessment is accompanied by a vocabulary test and is carefully aligned with recently taught content, while also incorporating elements of retrieval to revisit prior learning.
These assessments are used to identify gaps and inform subsequent teaching, ensuring that knowledge is revisited, consolidated and built upon over time. The End of Year Assessment provides a more synoptic evaluation, combining a range of topics and skills to assess pupils’ ability to apply their knowledge flexibly and independently.
This approach ensures pupils are well prepared for the demands of the GCSE specification, particularly in developing fluency, accuracy and the ability to retrieve and apply language across a range of contexts.
Key Stage 4
In Key Stage 4, pupils follow the AQA GCSE specification. The topics build on pupils' knowledge from KS3 and are in three broad themes as follows:
- Theme 1: People and Lifestyle
- Theme 2: Popular Culture
- Theme 3: Communication and the world around us
These themes are broken down into sub-topics. Details of these are available on the AQA website.
Assessment at Key Stage 4
GCSE French AQA 8652/GCSE Spanish AQA 8692
Paper 1: Listening
Overview
- Written exam: 35 minutes (Foundation tier), 45 minutes (Higher tier)
- 40 marks (Foundation tier), 50 marks (Higher tier)
- 25% of GCSE
• Each exam includes 5 minutes’ reading time at the start of the question paper before the listening material is played and 2 minutes at the end of the recording for students to check their workFocus
Focus
- Understanding and responding to spoken extracts comprising the defined vocabulary and grammar for each tier
- Dictation of short, spoken extracts
- Section A – listening comprehension questions in English, to be answered in English or non-verbally (32 marks at Foundation tier and 40 marks at Higher tier)
- Section B – dictation where students transcribe short sentences, including a small number of words from outside the prescribed vocabulary list (8 marks at Foundation tier and 10 marks at Higher tier)
Paper 2: Speaking
Overview
- Non-exam assessment (NEA)
- Internal Examination led by teacher examiner (normally the pupil’s teacher)
- 7-9 minutes (Foundation tier) + 15 minutes’ supervised preparation time
- 10-12 minutes (Higher tier) + 15 minutes’ supervised preparation time
- 50 marks (for each of Foundation tier and Higher tier)
- 25% of GCSE
Focus
- Speaking using clear and comprehensible language to undertake a Role-play
- Carry out a Reading aloud task
- Talk about visual stimuli
The format is the same at Foundation tier and Higher tier, but with different stimulus materials for the Role-play and the Reading aloud task. For the Photo card task, the same photos are used at both tiers.
- Role-play – 10 marks
- Reading aloud task and short conversation – 15 marks
- Reading aloud task: minimum 35 words of text at Foundation tier and 50 words at Higher tier
- Short unprepared conversation
- Photo card discussion – 25 marks
- Response to the content of the photos on the card
Unprepared conversation
Paper 3: Reading
Overview
- Written exam: 45 minutes (Foundation tier), 1 hour (Higher tier)
- 50 marks (for each of Foundation tier and Higher tier)
- 25% of GCSE
Focus
- Understanding and responding to written texts which focus predominantly on the vocabulary and grammar at each tier
- Inferring plausible meanings of single words when they are embedded in written sentences
- Translating from French/ Spanish into English
- Section A – reading comprehension questions in English, to be answered in English or non- verbally (40 marks)
- Section B – translation from French/ Spanish into English, minimum of 35 words at Foundation tier and 50 words at Higher tier (10 marks)
Paper 4: Writing
Overview
- Written exam: 1 hour 10 minutes (Foundation tier), 1 hour 15 minutes (Higher tier)
- 50 marks (for each of Foundation tier and Higher tier)
- 25% of GCSE
Focus
- Writing text in the language in a lexically and grammatically accurate way in response to simple and familiar stimuli
- Translating from English into French/ Spanish
Questions
Foundation tier
- Question 1 – five short sentences in response to a photo (10 marks)
- Question 2 – short piece of writing in response to five compulsory bullet points, approximately 50 words in total (10 marks)
- Question 3 – five short grammar tasks (5 marks)
- Question 4 – translation of sentences from English into German, minimum 35 words in total (10 marks)
- Question 5 (overlap question) –piece of writing in response to three compulsory bullet points, approximately 90 words in total. There is a choice from two questions (15 marks)
Higher tier
- Question 1 – translation of sentences from English into French/ Spanish, minimum 50 words in total (10 marks)
- Question 2 (overlap question) –piece of writing in response to three compulsory bullet points, approximately 90 words in total. There is a choice from two questions (15 marks)
- Question 3 – open-ended writing task (student responds to two bullets, producing approximately 150 words in total). There is a choice from two questions (25 marks)
Enrichment
We offer two lunchtime clubs: film club, where pupils are invited to come and watch films in either French, Spanish or German and games club, where pupils can play a variety of board games and interactive games in the target language. There is also a Spanish Club for Beginners in Years 7 and 8.
In September we run a series of activities to celebrate European Week of Languages. These include a variety of events both within the MFL department and across other departments in the school. Previous activities have included a European Bake-Off, which also raised over £250 in aid of MacMillan, as well as various quizzes and cross-curricular European-themed lessons.
Staff
- Mr D Surgeon - Head of Department
- Mrs K Gerrard - French and Spanish
- Mrs O Hamey - French
- Mrs E Holt - Temporary teacher of German
- Mrs A Pollock - French