MFL Curriculum and Pedagogical Approach
KS3-KS4
Head of Department: Mrs E Salgado esalgado@prsbucks.com
Our BIG INTENT
Our big intent in the implementation of our curriculum, underpinned by our mission statement, is for our students to achieve FLUENCY by the end of their language learning journey. We believe that FLUENT communication is the core for MOTIVATION and RECRUITMENT at GCSE and beyond. This journey starts at Y7 and will culminate for many, at Y11.
Our curriculum, hence, our SoW, is a continuum from Y7 to Y11, which builds upon specific blocks which form the path towards Fluency. This means that the interleaving of structures and having a global final vision of where we want to lead students, are the key foundations of the curriculum.
Reaching fluency means students will be able to communicate spontaneously and successfully in the target language in specific contexts. This is important, as communication is ESSENTIAL for language acquisition, beyond learning, to take place.
Communication is the purposeful interpretation and/or expression of meaning. Similarly, for second language acquisition to take place, students need to be involved in communicative tasks. (Florencia G. Henshaw, Mary Hawkins, Common Ground 2022).
For students to be able to communicate fluently and acquire their studied language, they need a REAL PURPOSE for the activities carried out in lessons.
This is why our curriculum is also based on Project Based Learning, where the different units will be studied for a purpose: a little project to be carried out by the end of a specific unit involving different linguistic skills (listening, speaking, writing, reading), but mainly productive skills (speaking/writing).
Our Teaching and Learning approach
Our approach is underpinned by two pillars:
Pillar 1: Cognitive Science Research and the relationship between the short and long-term memories: how we learn. This pillar supports the idea of LEXICOGRAMMAR, as a pedagogical approach to teach languages to avoid cognitive overload and reach fluency with a focus on communication.
Lexicogrammar approach:
Teaching vocabulary, grammar and phonics as a whole, not as separate units, at the beginning of the learning journey, to accelerate language acquisition and fluency.
Pillar 2: Rosenshine’s principles of instruction
Based on these two pillars, these are the stages of the language learning journey, for each unit/subunit, with lots of Retrieval Practice and Interleaving of structures.
The learning journey, divided in four stages, focuses on developing the linguistic skills necessary to reach Fluency/Spontaneity in the target language, taking into account how information gets transferred from the Working Memory to the Long-Term Memory (by retrieval & scaffolded practice, overlearning, modelling the language in small steps) while we avoid cognitive overload (lexicogrammar). The approach is founded in the concept that LESS IS MORE. This means our SoW is less content heavy than done traditionally or as stipulated by textbooks.
The learning journey and our SoWs provide students with a specific path to develop the necessary skills to, eventually, manipulate high frequency vocabulary, key grammatical structures with good pronunciation (phonics) to communicate fluently in the target language in real communicative tasks (project based learning and gamification).
To achieve our big intent under the frame of our pedagogical approach, the department is committed to the use of a range of methodologies all of which will be underpinned by the development of real communication skills and the creation of real scenarios to put these into practice (Project Based learning).
Learning Journeys
MFL Trips to Barcelona and Paris
