It is our intent at Acre View Primary School to provide all of our children with a high-quality education in Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), which develops their love of learning about other languages and cultures. Our current MFL taught is Mandarin Chinese.  It is our intention to ensure that by the end of our children’s primary education, they have acquired an understanding of both spoken and written Mandarin Chinese, confidence to speak with others and know how important other languages can be in their future.

We use a variety of the following techniques to encourage children to have an active engagement with Mandarin Chinese:

• Games – in order to develop vocabulary through repetition, reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.
• Role-play – these should relate to the situations the children may find themselves in the future.
• Action songs and rhymes – to develop phonetic skills, memory skills and to further vocabulary.
• Reading and writing quality materials.
• We build children’s confidence through praise for any contribution they make in the foreign language, however tentative.

We base the teaching on the 2014 National Curriculum and have adapted this to the context of our school.

Through the high quality first teaching of Mandarin Chinese taking place, we will see the impact of the subject in the following ways:

• Children will become aware that a language has a structure, and that the structure differs from one language to another.
• Children will develop their language and communication through development of the four key skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing.
• Children will enrich their language learning by developing an understanding of the Chinese culture.
• Children will transfer to KS3 effectively and successfully and will be well prepared to continue and develop their language skills.