Another questions about French....

[gingertoo]

Does anyone know whether secondary schools start from scratch with French in YR7 or do they assume a certain level of basic french has been reached at primary?

I ask because my son's primary school have done very little french at all (one half term of 'French Club' and an odd session every now and again is all that has been done) so his French is limited to telling you his name, his age, where he lives and counting to 20!

I think they assume zero knowledge. My daughter is in year 7 and is doing French and German - she'd done a little German in primary school and no French.

KS2 french is generally so badly coordinated that they start from scratch in Y7, although less from scratch than used to be the case...it does depend on the LA though, some are better than others at KS2 to 3 transition...

Thanks - I wondered whether that might be the case.

Do you think it's still worth doing a bit of French with him at home / online before he goes into YR7? He's the eldest in his year, G&T for maths and science and generally 'cruising' while they hothouse everyone for SATs, so it wouldn't overload him but he might enjoy it?

you can, but no need, if he's bright he'll pick it up quickly anyway, do too much and he'll be bored in the first few lessons - you can't win!

Ds started French from scratch in Year 7. They started slowly and are now picking up speed.

No harm done to do a bit at home. I taught ds to count up to 100, and basic verbs. No conversation practice though, as my accent would make Giscard d'Estaing turn in his grave!

at your french accent gramercy!

I have not done french since GCSE so I might try and find something we can do together..

This unfortunately is one of the problems in introducing MFL into primary schools, some children have covered the basics in one language, some in another, some have a pretty decent background in one, some in another. As a primary school we feed into a minimum of SIX different secondaries, two teach french in yr 7, two teach german, one teaches spanish and one mandarin! Given this, the secondaries assume the new yr 7's don't know anything ( and they are probably right )

A nice bit of joined up thinking by the government introducing languages into primary schools and then not matching it with what goes on in secondary schools. My DS did some french at primary school but since it was only once a week I think the class just forgot everything from one week to the next. It gave him no advantage whatsoever and he got just the same levels as his sisters who hadn't done any before.