Modern Foreign Languages

The MFL curriculum at St Katherine’s is designed to inspire students to become life-long linguists who are empowered to express themselves and understand others from a range of cultures. We support students to confidently develop their literacy skills and acquire key knowledge and skills, opening the world to our students and our students to the world. By studying languages at St Katherine’s, students are aware of and understand that other nations and other citizens of the United Kingdom have different languages, cultures and traditions. Students will learn that the similarities and differences can be fascinating, inspiring and incredibly varied – and that only through learning about how others live and communicate can we understand other cultures with the aim of interacting harmoniously. Within the faculty and across the wider school, we actively celebrate a range of cultural events, fostering students’ curiosity whilst developing respectful and open-minded young adults.
The ability to understand and communicate in other languages is a lifelong skill for education, travel and employment and our curriculum intends to inspire students to become, at each stage, confident speakers, listeners, readers and writers in the language taught.  By developing such communication skills and a deeper understanding of the structure of language, students are armed with the skills and knowledge to continue the development of their literacy skills across the curriculum alongside the opportunity to study further languages.