Modern Foreign Languages

The Modern Foreign Language faculty consists of four specialist language teachers and a native French or Spanish language assistant.

The department comprises of four classrooms, each with an interactive whiteboard,  the Language  assistant’s workroom and a MFL resources and staffroom.

The faculty has moved from strength to strength over the past few years offering French, Spanish and German to all abilities at Palatine Community Sports College.

All students study French for the first three years, and for those who enjoy learning a foreign language and show some aptitude for it, there is the opportunity to learn Spanish from the beginning of year 8. Pair work, group work and whole class teaching are evident and where appropriate much of the lessons are conducted in the foreign language and students are encouraged to use it from an early stage. The topics covered all revolve around the students own experiences and include such things as personal information, pastimes, school, finding your way around a French, Spanish or German town. To support learning materials such as tapes, videos, magazine, language games and computer software are used extensively.

Over the last few years the faculty has organised several visits to foreign countries and MFL events. These have two purposes – to provide an opportunity to speak the language of the country visited and to learn more about its culture.

Students and staff visited Paris and Normandy in 2004, 2005 and 2006.     

These visits included trips to Disneyland Paris, tours of the city and a stay in Normandy visiting St. Malo and Mont St. Michel, World 1 and 2 Sites.

More recently in May of 2008, students and staff visited Madrid.  As part of the visit there were trips to the Warner Brothers Theme Park, museums and galleries as well as a tour of the Real Madrid Stadium.   Further details of this educational and enjoyable visit are detailed within the extra curricular section of the website.