his week’s blog has been written by Mr Willis, Head of Modern Foreign Languages at Bethany School. He reflects on the start of the academic year and our pupils’ inspiring commitment to mastering new languages, grammar, and topics.

As I reflect on all that has happened over the past 2 ½ months since we returned to school in September I am full of admiration for the pupils we have in our MFL classes. They continue to work hard, getting to grips with new language, new grammar, new vocabulary, new topics.

This is no mean feat in a context where the rest of the time they are speaking English at home, with the friends or out and about. We are also lucky to be a school where pupils are drawn from over 20 different countries and every one of them brings a different perspective to the classroom.

Since I started at Bethany, it has been wonderful to see the department grow and flourish with a wide range of languages learnt. So, for example, this year we have Stella, Toby and Susanna studying French in Year 12. In Year 13 we have Elias sitting the Spanish paper 1 mock examination as I write this, which is a mammoth 2 hours long!

We also have two pupils in Year 12 studying other languages with tutors outside school – Asma is studying Persian and Aubrey is learning Italian; both of them sat GCSEs in the languages. Indeed this year, Aubrey sat French, Spanish and Mandarin GCSE, having sat Italian GCSE in Year 10. Because we are a multi-cultural, multi-lingual place of education here at Bethany, three Year 12 pupils are planning on sitting their A Level language exam a year early – Stella, Yu and Alvin.

We are very lucky to have such a rich and varied community of people who speak other languages.

If you have 10 minutes spare, I’d highly recommend a read of this excellent article:

Why Students Should Learn a Second Language

Mr Willis

Head of Modern Foreign Languages