The Modern Foreign Languages department at Weald of Kent Grammar School aims to foster a love of language in our students and enrich their awareness and appreciation of the world around them, as well as their linguistic knowledge. We work to provide students with not just practical communicative skills for use in the future, but a keen understanding of life in other countries and cultures and a wide range of linguistic structures. Our spiralling curricula in French, German and Spanish build effectively on the foundations of the National Curriculum that students are exposed to during their time at primary school, and we embed both knowledge and skills throughout students’ academic journey with us.
Our golden threads of vocabulary, grammar, listening, speaking, reading, writing and translation are weaved into all schemes of work and students continuously practise each of them, not just for a specific topic in isolation but across each module, year and key stage. This deliberate practice is key to students’ feeling of success and their confidence with the language(s) they are studying.
Students are consistently challenged in our lessons and all students have the opportunity to challenge themselves further by picking up a second foreign language in Year 9, with the aim of taking their study through to GCSE and beyond in both foreign languages they learn with us.
Furthermore, we seek to develop students’ curiosity about the world around them and the richness of the cultures of the people who live in it. Our students study grammar and linguistic structures that enhance their knowledge of their own language, and practise a variety of skills within our curriculum that can be applied to a wide range of future pathways. Our carefully-selected lesson content and wide range of extra-curricular activities help to boost students’ cultural awareness, not just of France, Germany and Spain but of the full variety of countries and cultures where the relevant language is spoken, thereby equipping students with cultural capital as well.