Modern Foreign Languages

Modern Foreign Languages is taught by a specialist teacher (Ms Mertz) in Key Stage 2. Currently the children are taught Spanish. We use resources and schemes of work from www.lightbulblanguages.co.uk in our delivery of Spanish. 

Here is our learning journey...

Kuhl states that by exposing children to languages at an early age we are giving them the opportunity to tap into their natural ability to hear and distinguish the sounds of other languages, and their capacity to make sense of what they are hearing. 

The impact of learning Spanish on reading in your mother tongue- 

Taken from: The influence of learning a second language in primary school on developing first language literacy skills (Murphy et al, 2014)

This study investigated whether learning a second language has a facilitative effect on first language literacy and whether there is an advantage to learning Spanish (or another language) with transparent grapheme–phoneme correspondences.  One hundred and fifty Year 3 children were randomly assigned into one of three groups: Spanish,  French, and control. Children were pretested on measures of English spelling, reading and phonological processing. The groups then received 15 weeks of instruction in Spanish or French, respectively. The groups outperformed the control group on measures of English reading accuracy and different aspects of phonological processing. In addition, there was an advantage for the Spanish group as their scores were higher than the French group on English reading accuracy and phonological processing.

Y6 completed a lesson where students could either argue for having only one language worldwide or multiple languages. Below are some of their arguments. Their enthusiasm for languages was admirable and Mrs Mertz commented on how well they engaged and debated. (Spring term 2022) 

“I think, we should have multiple languages, so that we can learn new things from each other every day.”

“I think, it would be better to have loads of languages as we are unique in our ways. If we take all languages away and leave only one, then people’s believes, cultures and countries would change.”

“I think languages should stay because diversity is important and everyone should decide how they want to express themselves.”

“More languages would be better as it would get boring if not and everyone would just be the same.”

“I think it would be better to have multiple languages because being bilingual helps to develop the brain and all cultures would be destroyed if we only spoke one language.”

“Being bilingual makes you special.”