It is our aim, as the Languages Faculty at Exmouth Community College, to deepen every learner’s awareness of different cultures, languages and experiences so that they recognise their responsibility in building connections across borders. Indeed, our first lesson of the year shares the Nelson Mandela quotation "If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart".  

 We recognise the languages spoken in our community and encourage students to learn and appreciate languages from around the world through our European Day of Languages celebrations and Duolingo challenge. Our approach unites phonics with chunking information and sentence grids to enable students to build their communication skills accurately, and with confidence.  

 At ECC we prioritise a curious exploration of the target language so that our students feel familiar with the different sounds and meanings and our Latinists deepen their understanding of both the Romance languages and English through their studies. Learning a foreign language allows our students to reflect on their own life experiences and abilities, and then project these in a different way, in a different language, which leads our students to develop a deeper understanding of themselves and of their potential.  We promote the excitement of language learning to empower learners along their journey. 

 Through studying languages at ECC we develop our sense of belonging by drawing clear parallels between our locality and experiences abroad. Our syllabus and cultural projects celebrate the Francophone and Hispanic worlds and show connections between Exmouth and French and Spanish-speaking tourist destinations around the world. The topic of food, drink and eating out links to the growing gastronomic riches and opportunities in our catchment area, including the Michelin-starred Lympstone Manor and we use role-plays to build communication skills within this and a range of other contexts, including those relating to travel and tourism. The ability to communicate clearly and be understood is an essential life skill, and our curriculum therefore builds on authentic French and Spanish pronunciation from the very beginning of KS3, leading to confidence in conversation skills into KS4 and 5. Our curriculum encourages these key skills which are in tune with the college vision. 

 Our students are introduced to celebrations, culture, customs, literature and history from other countries so that they understand how they can access the wide world of opportunities available to them. Mapping this approach onto our context in Exmouth allows our students to broaden their understanding of cultural differences and build their tolerance and respect of other customs and beliefs. Our intention is to empower our students and develop a sense of responsibility as confident and competent listeners, speakers and communicators, wherever their lives may take them in the future.  

Implementation

The MFL curriculum is taught using common curriculum resources which include Knowledge Organisers, teaching booklets, homework booklets and key routine slides. These incorporate the date in three different time frames, weather, a phonics programme and cultural capital to broaden our students' knowledge of the wider world.

We provide resources for our specialist teachers of languages to form the basis of their teaching, but we have aimed to be, ‘deliberately different’, to enable them to be adaptive in their teaching.

Our teaching is based on Rosenshine’s principles of instruction linked with Tom Sherrington’s Walkthrus and we use a range of pedagogical strategies to give our students, including those with SEND, the skills and support to access our curriculum.

Our curriculum is coherently sequenced so that when we introduce new concepts, we also recycle previously taught content as a way of interleaving and ensuring retention of knowledge. This enables students to make links to language that they have previously learnt, and it embraces our teaching of mastery and non- negotiables.