Modern Foreign Languages at The King Alfred School

In addition to the practical benefit of being able to communicate more successfully with more people, language learning brings cultural and educational advantages which are vital to our well-being:

• Learning other languages and valuing other cultures promotes tolerance and understanding at home and abroad
• Intercultural skills are essential to the success of multicultural teams and underpin good management in public services as well as in global business
• Language learning develops literacy and reading skills (D’Angiulli, Siegel and Serra, 2001) and improves academic achievement (Armstrong and Rogers, 1997)
• There are important cognitive benefits associated with speaking more than one language (Bialystock, 2001)

At The King Alfred School, we offer two Modern Foreign Languages: French and Spanish, to all students from Year 7. All students have three language lessons per week. We are a team of 4 full-time specialists and one part-time specialist with additional staff working as conversation assistants with exam classes. We offer a variety of teaching styles and methodologies, catering for the learning styles of all students. These include formal grammar teaching, learning through song and games, using the interactive whiteboard, speaking practice, film, IT, vocabulary learning as well as focusing on listening and reading comprehension skills. The Department has 4 specialist classrooms as well as an MFL computer laboratory where students have the opportunity to work independently.