Subject Choices for GCSE Options group one
Skills for the future
Opportunities for Playful Scholarship
Learning another language provides a very wide range of transferrable skills. Communication skills, including verbal confidence and presentation skills, are acquired through increased fluency. Creativity and flexibility of thought are key to speaking and writing successfully in another language. Tackling grammar, translation and comprehension tasks builds analytical and problem-solving skills. Openness to, and appreciation of, difference and the ability to consider others’ perspectives is crucial to encountering a different language and culture.
The French department encourages intellectual curiosity and risk-taking in all of our lessons. Playful scholarship is key to our teaching; games designed to practise key grammatical concepts, working together to decipher complex syntax; the sense of satisfaction that comes from those lightbulb moments of understanding or creatively incorporating the word of the month into your own work. Our weekly languages club, Linguine, offers fun cultural activities and the opportunity to learn new languages. Students take the lead in researching and writing articles about language and culture for the termly Linguistica blog. We encourage keen linguists to participate in the Flash Fiction creative writing competition and the Stephen Spender Prize for translation.
The wide skillset that language students develop ranging from practical communication to increased empathy - is highly prized by universities and employers across all fields.
Learning French is not just about vocabulary tests and grammar exercises. Whilst these play an important part in honing skills, ultimately learning a language is about being able to communicate with other people, about understanding another culture, about expanding our horizons.
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