Modern Languages

We offer AS and A level courses in French, German and Spanish. As part of your AS/A level course you will be invited to take part in our work experience exchanges or our cultural exchanges. This will give you the opportunity to stay with a family abroad. In France and Germany you will undertake a work placement – usually in a nursery or primary school – where you will enjoy improving your language skills by talking with the youngsters in your classes, who are always thrilled by the arrival of a young stranger! In Spain, you will also stay with a family and experience a genuine fiesta along with other cultural visits.

We offer the conventional route of studying at Key stage 5 level, where students can continue their GCSE language studies by opting to do AS or IB courses in French, German and Spanish. In addition, we run IB Spanish ab initio courses (IB Spanish from scratch!). This means that you don't have to have done a GCSE in Spanish to do the course, but you will find it extremely useful if you have already studied another language at GCSE. These particular Spanish courses are hard work but very rewarding and students very quickly gain confidence in the target language and are able to speak Spanish with good fluency.

We also run beginners’ Russian, Mandarin and Japanese courses at lunchtimes as part of the Enrichment Programme. These last for one term and give an introduction to the basics of the languages. Indeed, some former students have enjoyed their course so much they have gone on to take up the language as an option on a university Language degree course. We also offer the possibility for native or near native speakers of community languages to be entered for A level exams to gain reward for their skills. Over the last two years we have entered students in Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Urdu, Farsi, Arabic, Panjabi and Portuguese.

The Language Department features a multi media Sanako Language Laboratory which is regularly used in class.   Students are also able to work independently improving listening and speaking skills with specially prepared self-study resources. Furthermore, we employ native language assistants for French, German and Spanish who help you to gain confidence in speaking the given language.

Some common questions answered:

• Students will begin the AS and IB courses with at least a B grade at GCSE. For those wanting to learn Spanish at ab-initio level, ideally they will have a B grade in a Modern Foreign Language.
• As in any AS subject, we are aware of the need to support students in the transition from GCSE to a higher level of study. The AS language courses build on the 4 main skills developed at GCSE: speaking, listening, reading and writing. We then gradually build up a thorough knowledge of the structures of the language with a full grammar revision programme and extend vocabulary knowledge to cover the AS topic areas including the world of work. 
•  A language combines well with any combination of other subjects – for example many Science-based degree courses now offer the opportunity for their students to work in labs abroad as part of the course. Similarly some Law courses provide opportunities to follow options in European law and placements abroad.
• Studying two or even three languages is not a problem! Whilst there may be occasional mixing up of vocabulary this is soon ironed out and in fact covering the grammar in both languages will only serve to reinforce the basic concepts.

 AS/A2 Languages

General Topic Areas