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 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 curriculum focuses on translation as an additional skill, great importance is given to phonics and accents, role-play transactions and dictations.

We want students to feel confident communicating in the foreign language, so we offer exchange programmes to Bonnigheim in Germany, Almerimar in the south of Spain and the outskirts of Paris in France. These exchanges 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, hometown, 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 and 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 regular intervention sessions are offered at KS4.