The IB courses in Modern Languages will aim to provide the opportunity for enjoyment, creativity and intellectual stimulation through the learning of a foreign language.

At the heart of the IB is the idea of encouraging an awareness and appreciation of other peoples, their cultures and perspectives.  In Modern Languages we want to help achieve this by taking each student to a country where their language is spoken, at least once during the course.  We hope that this will encourage students to adopt an international outlook and provide them with a firm basis for further study, work and leisure linked to the language they study, and maybe others they choose to study in the future.

Students will develop the four skills they have known at GCSE to the levels required to deal with adult themes, where they will need to reflect complex ideas and shades of opinion and to tailor their language to the situation in which they are using it.  This will be achieved through a wide range of activities encompassing a variety of styles and registers.  Full use will be made of the school’s access to a wide range of media (via satellite, the Internet, periodicals and films) to provide the broadest possible range of exposure to the language used by native speakers.  All the time they will be encouraged to use the spoken language as their means of communication.  To encourage this, additional support will be provided outside timetabled lessons by a foreign language assistant.  The Learning Resource Centre will be stocked for research and reading for pleasure, as well as offering Internet access, while the language lab offers facilities for self-study.

French, German and Spanish will be offered at Higher and Standard Level; Russian and Japanese are offered at Standard Level.  The Year 12 course will improve the overall level of students’ competence in the language, especially cementing the foundations of grammar laid down at GCSE.  They will learn to skim and scan texts, and will be encouraged to read for pleasure as well as to write in both a controlled and targeted way and to express themselves freely.  All the time they will be encouraged to choose the target language as their means of communication.  The Year 13 course will focus increasingly on the respective targets of Higher or Standard Level, with the Higher Level group extending the range and quantity of the material they cover, as well as refining their use of the language to reach the required Higher Level.