At Wicor Primary School we call our Modern Foreign Language studies FLA (Foreign Language Awareness) because we believe it is better for our children to have a general awareness of how different languages work, rather than an in depth knowledge of just one second language. Our pupils learn to “be language learners”: picking up skills which will benefit them in a future which is likely to be increasingly multi-cultural and multi-lingual.

Aims of Language Learning at Wicor Primary School

• Our children have a curiosity about the world and an appetite to find out about it

• They have the knowledge and confidence to enable them to communicate with people of other nationalities and languages

• They listen attentively to others, watching body language and non-verbal clues in order to understand better

• They see FLA as useful and relevant to everyday life

• They think FLA is challenging, exciting and fun!

We have puppets to help us learn languages. Oscar, a bright orange bird puppet, helps the younger children. He makes lots of mistakes, which makes them feel safe about “having a go” themselves. Juan Alejandro Garcia Rodriguez (whose name is a language lesson in itself!) is a monkey puppet, who comes from South America and is a great help when we’re learning Spanish.

We learn some German too, which is quite a different language from the others. It’s useful to be able to compare three languages that have such contrasting sounds.

We also experience “droplets” of many different languages and cultures when visitors come to our classes and talk to us about languages and places that they have experienced.