Welcome to Modern Foreign Languages at Catmose College. We are very proud to have a talented team, able to offer French, Spanish and German. The drive and commitment from staff and an overwhelming desire to promote languages means that we deliver lessons in many different ways to engage learners. We want students to feel confident in all four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.  We regularly use authentic materials to capture the culture of the country being studied through watching video clips, reading extracts from books and listening to native speakers.

The new curriculum focuses on translation as an additional skill and students will learn how to translate texts both into the language and back into English within the writing and reading skills.

We want students to feel confident communicating in the foreign language so we offer exchange programmes to Bonnigheim in Germany and Almerimar in the south of Spain. We also offer a KS3 trip to northern France. These trips are an invaluable part of language learning which aim to give students the opportunity to experience the language and culture first hand and to put into practice what has been learnt in the classroom.

During the KS3 course, students will study a range of topics such as self and family, home town, holidays, free-time and health and fitness. The vocabulary and grammar are introduced in a fun and innovative way using an up to date interactive textbook, online games such as Quizlet and Kahoot and also through numerous engaging classroom activities as well as the important traditional methods of repetition. Each topic is repeated and built on each year to increase the student’s level of fluency and understanding as they progress through the key stage.

Staff are always on hand if a student needs extra help in understanding a concept and in some cases pre-recorded grammar explanations are available if a further explanation is needed.