MFL
Welcome to our Curriculum Area!
At present the languages curriculum area at Merchants’ Academy consists of two full-time members of staff , Miss Baker and Miss Milkins (AST) and several native speakers who work with the students on different days of the week. This is an exciting time for the department, however, as more students will be undertaking languages at all levels including sixth form in the next few years.
Resources
We are extremely well-equipped with ICT equipment, books and interactive resources and we strive to make MFL lessons both challenging and fun to enable all of our students to achieve their best. We currently use Mira and Listos for Spanish and Expo for KS3 French and have access to some of the ICT packages produced alongside these books. We use Edexcel for Spanish, French, Italian, German and Russian GCSE and Russian GCE and we use AQA for Polish GCSE and OCR for GCSE Dutch.
Curriculum
Currently, students in Key Stage 3 study Spanish, and have the opportunity to choose the language at GCSE. We also offer classes in French with a view to developing this as a strong second language throughout the Academy.
The top sets of the 2009 intake will complete a fast track 3 year GCSE French course taking the exam in Year 9. These students will then have the opportunity to study a 2 year GCSE Spanish at Key Stage 4 and can continue their French studies with a 2 year AS level course in Years 10 and 11. There will also be the opportunity for other students to study Spanish over 5 years for either a GCSE or a Level 1 pathway course.
In the sixth form, students will have the opportunity to study the IB Diploma and can choose either ab initio, SL or HL in French or Spanish at present. They can also opt to study a Certificate in Business Language Competence should they prefer this route.
Co-Curricular
Through the co-curricular programme, there are opportunities to study languages after school and we have both German and Mandarin Chinese clubs running on different days of the week.
We are also keen on cross-curricular and international projects and run an annual 'International Day' and several in-class projects. Year 7 are presently doing an international photography project with a student from UWE and the Year 8s are about to embark on a cross-curricular literacy project with a member of staff from the English Curriculum Area.
There are also opportunities for international cross-curricular work with a new link school from Peru and others we are currently developing with Spain and other countries.
Our native speakers are an important part of the work we do and we have four native Spanish and one Mandarin Chinese speaker helping out during the week at various times.
Students at Merchants’ Academy who already have skills in foreign languages through family links are given the opportunity to study their respective languages at GCSE or AS level. We currently have students sitting examinations in seven languages at GCSE and one at AS level.
If you should require any further information about the department or the position available please do not hesitate to contact Lisa Baker for more information.