Category:

Languages

Whether travelling to Ibiza for the summer party scene, watching a tense match between Madrid and Barcelona at the Bernabéu stadium, proposing to your beloved at the top of the Eiffel tower, or sunbathing on the Côte d’Azur, your knowledge of French or Spanish will make you feel much more part of the scene if you can speak it too.   French is spoken by 220 million in countries from France, Ivory Coast, Switzerland, Canada and Morocco, and Spanish is spoken by 400 million in not only Spain but Central America and most of South America.  The USA is set to become the largest Spanish speaking nation by 2050.  And yes, that is including Spain! 

Our school trips to Nice and Salamanca provide our pupils with a glimpse into another vision of life.  Nothing beats total immersion in the culture itself.  We have also hosted foreign film evenings including one with a talk from the director himself.  Pupils can receive French or Spanish magazines specifically designed for young people so that their knowledge of the country isn’t just confined to the textbook.  We teach in a way that is compatible with our digitally adept pupils by using Kahoot, Memrise, Quizlet Live and Google Classroom.   

Language learning is not just about verbs, it’s what you do with them that matters!  At Ditcham, we aim to equip our pupils with the building blocks of language that will enable them to discover for themselves the richness and excitement of the French and Spanish speaking countries of the world.  In the last year, we have adopted the Gianfranco Conti method of teaching in Years 7 and 8 to ensure that happens.  A new approach based on neuro-scientific research, this enables pupils to become very familiar and comfortable with the language by practising it in many different scenarios.  We subscribe to the Language Gym website, which provides a plethora of activities and games in vocabulary and sentence structure so that it really sinks in. 

Vive la France!  Viva España! 

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