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The Modern Foreign Languages Department Introductory Courses In Year 8, students study French during Terms 1 and 2 and then they study German during Terms 3 and 4. They have 2 hours a week. The idea behind these courses is to offer all boys a second language opportunity and allow them to make an informed decision about which language to choose in Years 9 and 10. Junior languages in Years 9 and 10 Boys can choose to study French, German or Technology for 3 hours per week for two years. If boys intend to go on to the IB programme then they must remember that a language is a compulsory element of this course which needs to start in the junior years. AIM (Accelerated Integrated Method) is a new concept for teachers of French in New Zealand and has radically changed the implementation of French in the junior years. The concept is simple enough: gestures, or sign language, are used to support learning and to enable the use of maximum target language in the classroom. These activities push students to higher ranges of fluency (both oral and written) as they progress through each story unit. The recommended vocabulary that the teacher presents to students in this programme has been carefully selected over time, through action research in core and immersion classrooms as well as through research into studies of high frequency and developmental language acquisition. It accelerates the internalisation of the target vocabulary from unit to unit and year to year. The current year 9 and10 classes have been the first classes in the school to benefit from this method and the results are quite amazing. The enforcement of the “No English!” rule means that the boys have to use French to speak to me and to each other and it works! The fear of making mistakes is overridden by their need to speak so fluency in the target language is attained at a much faster rate than has been possible before. The gestures provide support for the accomplishment of the tasks. People always ask me with concern whether the boys will be gesturing all the time. Please don’t worry; the boys drop the gestures once they know the words!! Differentiated activities, games, magazines and readers are all still available to the students and I have noticed much less reliance on dictionaries.
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