French
At DESS, we offer French from Year 3, once a week. During lessons, our teaching approach incorporates movement, music and drama to support vocabulary retention.
Our Curriculum
Although all basic ‘traditional’ topics such as greetings, colours, numbers, family members are covered in lesson starters, the main part of the lesson is French taught through the TPRS method (Teaching Proficiency by Reading and Story-telling) created by Blaine Ray and based on Natural Approach Theory. This method mimics the way we learn our native language, through Comprehensible input and meaningful interactions. Children interact in a story led by the teacher and unconsciously integrate grammar and vocabulary. TPRS targets high frequency vocabulary and conjugation (verb use).
We make extensive use of the websites Linguascope.com and quizlet.com for vocabulary input and revision. Children are advised to spend a little time every week revising the words covered in class through playing the games on the site.
Why learn French?
- French, a language spoken on all five continents.
- French is one of the very few languages spoken all over the world, ranked the 5th most widely spoken language after English, Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish (busuu.com).
- There are currently over 280 million French speakers worldwide (busuu.com).
- It is estimated that the number of French speakers will rise to over 700 million by 2050, making it the most widely spoken mother tongue in the world by 2050.
- French is an official language of 29 countries, second only to English in this category.
- French is one of the working languages of the United Nations and plays a special role in international sporting life as an official language of the Olympic Games.