It is the intent of foreign language teaching at Mount Pleasant Junior School to instill a love of all aspects of language learning from an early age. Our aim is that all children, including those with SEND and from a disadvantaged background, should enjoy learning to communicate in French and also learn about cultural differences and similarities with other French speaking countries around the world. 

We encourage children to develop independence in their learning from the very beginning, promoting deeper thinking about etymology with a focus on recognising patterns and structures within language. Children enjoy the challenge of noticing cognates, thinking about similarities and differences of grammatical rules in French and English, such as the similarities in relation to elision and the differences in use of accents or position of adjectives. This encourages a deeper thinking about and understanding of the English language as well as French and actively creates a space where all children can flourish, no matter what their academic ability. With a focus on phonics and grammar, rather than purely vocabulary based learning, children are enabled to take responsibility for their own progress very early on in their language journey, becoming familiar with key structures that can be applied to many different contexts, thereby allowing children of all attainment levels to achieve and inspiring children to extend their learning. 

We use a creative approach to language learning, using games, songs and drama to engage the children and give lots of opportunities to practice key phrases and language skills, helping them to develop resilience and make excellent progress. Sharing authentic texts, songs and poems from other francophone countries provides the opportunity for children to build their cultural capital whilst exploring their own identity and better understanding their own place in the wider world. 

Language learning at Mount Pleasant Junior School is ambitious, creative and inclusive, allowing all children to engage both on a linguistic and cultural level regardless of  their background. Close contact with our local secondary school means that the early experiences of our learners are built upon in their transition to secondary education, giving them maximum opportunity to take advantage of experiences in later life.

Our aim is that children should:

• 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.
• continually improve the accuracy of their pronunciation and intonation, supported by their phonic knowledge and frequent exposure to the spoken word
• notice and use language structures and patterns to help them to understand the written and spoken word 
• 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
• Develop an understanding of other cultures