Modern Foreign Languages

The MFL curriculum at Lawn Manor equips all learners with the knowledge and skills to understand, communicate and express themselves authentically, in a range of topics of significance to them. The goal of our curriculum is spontaneity and fluency in Spanish that learners may use in a variety of different contexts such as further study, travel or work abroad.

In Key Stage 3, these range from describing themselves and others, hobbies and free time, where they live, school life, food, drink and health, holidays and technology. We believe that this is done best when language is presented in chunks that learners will encounter frequently, which are then analysed and learners are given opportunities to manipulate these in order to express themselves authentically.

The first three years of study lay the solid foundations for successful GCSE study where these topics are revisited again but in greater detail. Learners will be able to successfully express themselves in a range of tenses as they move through the curriculum – past, present and future and will have the subject-specific vocabulary to name the tenses that they are learning.
We place a strong emphasis on frequent revising of phonics to ensure all pupils have accurate pronunciation and the independence to be successful with unfamiliar language. The curriculum ensures that learners have an understanding and appreciation for cultural differences and can enjoy many topics of cultural significance in the Hispanic world such as famous festivals and traditions.

The curriculum ensures that pupils will be able to successfully read, listen, write and speak in the target language and develop their independence as language learners through translation, inference of meaning, making regular cultural references and reacting to the unpredictable, as would happen in real-life situations.

Our curriculum is supplemented with high-quality language learning technology to support learning outside of the classroom such as the Language Gym and Language Nut. Learners are also given the opportunity to display their language skills in Spanish or any other language of their choice through a school-wide language competition.