Welcome to the Modern Languages Department.
This school is an official Government registered language college, which runs night classes in association with Butts' Community Association. One of the sponsors is Vektor, a company which has helped with all four languages which are taught during school time. Outside school time there are additional languages on offer, although this is an initiative with Butts' Community Association.
The Department teaches 4 languages - French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The Department consists of 7 language teachers and 3 native speaking assistants from France, Germany and Spain to help pupils with their conversational skills. In addition, there is a full-time technical assistant on-site to help with the running of the state-of-the-art equipment;
16 Pentium computers, 12 of which are 133MHz, 4 of which are 100MHz, all with multimedia access. There are 4 computers for each language which have specialised access to CD-ROMs specifically designed for help in the specified language. There are plans to make Internet access available to these machines;
A specialised language lab, with 32 state-of-the-art workstations, 6 of which have videos, and this number will increase in the future;
There is satellite recording of foreign television programs, which are made available to students, and therefore enables them to keep up to date with the news abroad, and the school is on BT's Campus World Database.
As for curriculum, the school offers French, Spanish and German for both GCSE and A-level, and at the moment offers Japanese to GCSE, and will start to offer it to A-level when the time comes that pupils will have been able to take the subject to GCSE by the end of Year 11. Assessment in the three European languages is controlled by the NEAB, and the exam board in control of Japanese is the London board.Year 7 girls must go on a visit to either France, Germany or Spain at the end of Year 7, and this is a compulsory undertaking by the parents of each girl before she comes to the school. Sixth Formers and teachers supervise girls on these week long trips.
The school is also developing the possibility of offering European Work Experience to students in Year 12, which would allow the students to spend at least a week, possibly two, working in their chosen country.
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