Modern Foreign Languages
The Languages Department at Ridgeway offers both French and Spanish taught by 2 enthusiastic linguists who want to pass onto their students a love of languages and an understanding of their importance in today’s society.
We aim to equip our students with the skills necessary for an increasingly competitive job market where we believe it is no longer acceptable or practical to be monolingual.
Our students enjoy stimulating and challenging lessons delivered through a variety of teaching styles.
We have the following ambitions for our students:
- We aim to develop their ability to analyse language and as a consequence have a better understanding of their own language.
- We aim to develop their critical thinking skills and use these skills in the application of grammar in the foreign language.
- We inform our young linguists about the roots of words encouraging them to think about their own language and develop their understanding of how languages are continually evolving.
- We strive to develop their cultural awareness and appreciation through film, extracts of foreign literature and opportunities to travel abroad.
- We firmly believe that a greater understanding of other languages and cultures can breed tolerance, empathy, adaptability and consideration for others as well as a willingness and confidence to overcome communication barriers.
Key Stage 3
The KS3 curriculum in French and Spanish is carefully sequenced to enable students to make excellent progress in the 4 skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. They will study key topic areas which will be used as vehicles to develop their knowledge of grammar and sentence construction.
The Key Topic areas for each year are outlined below:
Year 7 French and Spanish
Your Family: Self family and friends, ccountries and nationalities, descriptions of family members.
Life at school: School subjects and opinions, time and timetable, uniform, description of the school day.
Free time: Your favourite sports and activities, weather, describing what you do at the weekend and what you are going to do.
Where you live: Places in the town, describing where you live, describing where you are going to live in the future.
Year 8 French and Spanish
Free Time: Discussing how you like to spend you free time. Describing what you did last weekend.
Invitations: Inviting friends out, making excuses not to go, saying where you are going and discussing a shopping trip.
Technology and pocket money: Which gadgets you use and how often. Pocket money and how do you spend it.
Food and Drink: What foods do you like to eat and drink?
Holidays : Where are you going to go holiday and what activities are you going to do?
Year 9 French: we focus on key topics in greater detail while practicing key grammar points such as a range of tenses, object pronouns, negatives, connectives and key constructions.
Healthy Eating: What foods you should eat and why?
Smoking and drugs: The consequences of smoking and taking drugs.
Holidays: Where do you normally go on holiday and where did you go last year? Why are holidays important ? Would you prefer to go on holidays with family or friends? If you won the lottery where would you go?
