Welcome !

The MFL department at Barton Court Grammar School is a very active and dynamic department that has high expectations of its pupils. Foreign languages are given great importance, and all students must study at least one language to GCSE level, although we encourage all the good linguists to study two.

The department has 6 full time and 5 part-time teachers, of whom 7 are native speakers. We are also fortunate in our three native speaking assistants. There are six teaching rooms, all equipped with interactive whiteboards in addition to TV and video facilities, including our own computer suite, with 30 computers, where students enjoy a variety of MFL programs. Each group is timetabled in the computer room once a fortnight for 50 minutes per language.

Staff

• Mr A Plowman (Language College Director)
• Ms C. Benard (Teacher of Spanish and French)
• Mrs S Brndusanovic (Teacher of Spanish and French)
• Miss K Elgar (Teacher of Spanish)
• Mr.J Gauthier (Teacher of Spanish and French)
• Mrs G. Green (Teacher of German and French)
• Mrs K Kondo (Teacher of Japanese)(part-time)
• Mrs X-W Macarthur (Teacher of Chinese)(part-time)
• Mrs Perkins (Head of KS5 Languages)
• Mrs A Radix (Head of KS4 Languages)
• Mrs N Tarnyagina (Teacher of Russian)(part-time)
• Mrs R. Williams (Head of KS3 Languages)

KS3 provision

We offer Spanish and French to all our students in KS3. They may also have access to Chinese and German, which is taught on a rota to some KS3 classes.

We follow the Harcourt courses, ¡Listos! for Spanish and Expo for French, supplemented by a wide range of electronic and other printed resources, ensuring that a variety of activity is offered to suit every type of learner. We also subscribe to the Zut/Ola, Linguascope, Espanol Extra websites.

By the end of KS3 we expect the majority of our students to achieve level 6, while the very good linguists should be reaching level 7.

KS4

Students may choose their preferred language for GCSE, but good linguists are always encouraged to study two. We follow the EDEXCEL board, with the written coursework option. We are currently able to offer French, German, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. It is hoped that Italian will also shortly be available at GCSE.

KS5

It is necessary to achieve at least grade B at GCSE in order to continue studying this at AS/A2 Level. We have very enthusiastic linguists, who tend to go on to university and continue with language or language combined degrees. We follow the EDEXCEL board, with the coursework option. We have a history of 100% success rate at this level.

The IB has been introduced in the present year 12, resulting in a considerable increase in students at KS5. The IB may be considered more demanding than A levels in some ways, since there is more emphasis on the reading and writing skills. There is no listening exam. Instead, the listening skills are tested within oral activities in class. This is called interactive orals, which are done on a regular basis as class activities. At the moment we provide French, German and Spanish at Higher levels. We also provide Chinese, Japanese and Italian at Ab Initio levels (slightly higher than GCSE level). We have a high number of students doing the IB in MFL, with some students doing 2 languages at Higher level.

Trips and visits

These are an integral part of our programme, since cultural awareness is one of the requirements in the National Curriculum. Students have the opportunity to take part in a number of educational visits abroad. In Year 7 students spend three days in Hardelot and we also run a cross curricular day trip to Azincourt and Montreuil as part of our Enrichment Week programme. In Years 9 and 11/12 students may take part in the Spanish trip to Santander. We have also run a Year 8/9 day trip to Paris and a Year 12/13 trip to Provence in the south of France. These trips are very successful and we plan to expand our programme over the coming year.

Extra curricular classes

The MFL department is committed to offering a variety of extra curricular activities with the aim of making the learning of foreign languages more fun and enjoyable. Students have the chance to use our games as well as computer facilities, watch films and read foreign magazines. Booster Clubs for exam classes are also offered to boost students' confidence, particularly in speaking, prior to final exams.

You are visitor: 55090