At Rose Street the language the children are learning is French, although only statutory in KS2 we expect all children to learn songs and simple phrases in Reception and KS1 as this reinforces spoken language. Learning a language offers many cross-curricular opportunities in the primary classroom for work in geography, history, art, music, maths and English.

The National Curriculum for languages aims to ensure that all pupils:

• Understand and respond to spoken and written language from a variety of authentic sources
• Speak with increasing confidence, fluency and spontaneity, finding ways of communicating what they want to say, including through discussion and asking questions, and continually improving the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation
• Can write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences, using the variety of grammatical structures that they have learnt
• Discover and develop an appreciation of a range of writing in the language studied.

Learning a language:

• Allows pupils to deepen their understanding and curiosity of the world
• Improves their grasp of English
• Enhances confidence
• Widens career/job opportunities
• Makes travelling abroad easier, while allowing for connections to be made
• Promotes an open mind and tolerance

Learning to communicate in French will provide the children with practical language skills and useful knowledge for their future. French is the first Modern Foreign Language taught in the UK. It is offered in 92% of secondary schools and 75% of primary schools in England (British Council Language Trends Report 2020). Over 50% of companies rate French as useful to their organisation (Pearson Education and Skills Survey 2017).

In an interview in 2018 Callum Davies from Cardiff City Football Club reflects on his language learning journey:
“I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of French-speaking players while I’ve been here and made some good friends as well on the way. Learning languages is an enormously important skill…I think that it allows you to be more open-minded. The ability to speak different languages can allow you to build relationships with people you wouldn’t necessarily expect to. It’s got me to a place I wouldn’t have expected to be in six or seven years ago.”