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Monday, 20 April 2009
Whilst many schools are cutting back on their modern foreign
languages teaching, Bolton School is expanding its provision in a
whole variety of ways.
In the next academic year, the School will hold a Languages
Festival, which will be open to local primary schools. Pupils will
be able to sample taster courses, make use of the School's
resources and receive expert tuition from experienced language
teachers.
From September 2009, the Boys' Division will add Spanish to its
GCSE options when a new teacher, Ms Wardle, arrives. This will
complement the long-running and thriving French, German and Russian
courses.
The Girls' Division has, this year, introduced Spanish into the
Junior School for Year 3 and this will continue into Year 4. The
Girls' Senior School already offers Spanish, alongside its French
and German provision and is set to invest in a Sanako 100 language
lab, which will enable flexible and digitised learning.
Where many schools are no longer running foreign trips, the
School still has a burgeoning portfolio of cultural visits,
exchanges and foreign work experience schemes. This is largely due
to the dedication of the languages teaching staff, who forego their
holidays to conduct regular trips to Germany, France, Spain and
Russia.
We are delighted to be increasing our provision of languages and
look forward to the introduction of Spanish. Languages have always
been very popular with pupils at Bolton School. We are very proud
of the language teaching and the range of trips abroad that we run.
We know that they inspire interest in other cultures and provide
lifelong memories for students. In these uncertain times and
shrinking world we need skilled linguists more than ever.
Mr Chris Pownall, Head of Modern Foreign Languages in the
Boys' Division
We regularly attract guest speakers into school; earlier in the
year we had a speaker from Manchester University give a talk about
careers in languages and this was followed by taster sessions of
the Russian and Italian languages. This term we also had the
Spanish Chief Examiner in school and we invited Canon Slade and
Thornleigh pupils to the talk. One of my favourite activities has
been the Year 8 Languages Day, which included everything from salsa
dancing to waffle making to French music! Our department is looking
forward to holding a number of events to celebrate the European Day
of Languages in September.
Head of Foreign Languages in the Girls' Division, Mrs
Angela Shafiq
Professor Alan Smithers of the University of Buckingham recently
paid tribute to independent schools, calling them the engine rooms
of modern foreign languages.
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