Purpose of Study

Learning a foreign language is a liberation from insularity and provides an opening to other cultures. A high-quality languages education should foster pupils’ curiosity and deepen their understanding of the world. The teaching should enable pupils to express their ideas and thoughts in another language and to understand and respond to its speakers, both in speech and in writing. It should also provide opportunities for them to communicate for practical purposes, learn new ways of thinking and read great literature in the original language. Language teaching should provide the foundation for learning further languages, equipping pupils to study and work in other countries.

Aims

The national curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils: 

• understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources 
• speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation 
• can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt 
• discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Key Stage 2

Pupils should be taught to: 

• listen attentively to spoken language and show understanding by joining in and responding 
• explore the patterns and sounds of language through songs and rhymes and link the spelling, sound and meaning of words 
• engage in conversations; ask and answer questions; express opinions and respond to those of others; seek clarification and help
• speak in sentences, using familiar vocabulary, phrases and basic language structures 
• develop accurate pronunciation and intonation so that others understand when they are reading aloud or using familiar words and phrases 
• present ideas and information orally to a range of audiences
• read carefully and show understanding of words, phrases and simple writing 
• appreciate stories, songs, poems and rhymes in the language 
• broaden their vocabulary and develop their ability to understand new words that are introduced into familiar written material, including through using a dictionary 
• write phrases from memory, and adapt these to create new sentences, to express ideas clearly 
• describe people, places, things and actions orally* and in writing