MODERN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

The Modern Foreign Languages department believes that learning another language enriches your life and can open many doors in the future. We aim to give pupils the opportunity to learn at least one, and usually two foreign languages during their education at St. Edward’s. At present we offer French, German and Spanish to GCSE, AS and A2 level.

Linguistic competence is important, as is an understanding of different cultures. We bring languages to life by giving the opportunity to spend time in a country in which the language is spoken and to this end we offer excursions, exchanges and study trips to France, Germany and Spain. Whenever possible we attend A Level Study Days and go on theatre and cinema trips. This year we also have an after school modern foreign languages film club for year 11-13 pupils. In September we celebrate European Day of Languages and offer other enrichment activities such as a year 9 European Lunch and year 8 Sandwich Surprise competitions. We encourage pupils to take an interest in languages which are not on the curriculum and offer lunchtime Italian and Mandarin clubs.

We are a well qualified and well resourced department using both traditional and modern methods of teaching. We have three language assistants who contribute to the achievement of excellent levels of oral competence in all languages. We have achieved very successful public examination results in recent years – see results page for full details.

Pupils have gone on to study languages at university, both as main and as subsidiary subjects.

“A different language is a different vision of life” – Federico Fellini