We aim to develop each student’s confidence in learning a language so that they become linguists of the future and flourish in the wider world

Languages contribute to the cultural and linguistic richness of our society, through personal fulfilment, mutual understanding, commercial success and international trade and global citizenship. At BHS we use a creative and communicative approach to teaching which is supported by an embedded use of technology in the classroom. We aim to instil a love of the language, culture, thought and history. We go beyond the textbook at BHS; we use a variety of resources from film, literature, song, and current affairs.

Trips to France/Germany are an integral part of the learning. We aim to teach students to communicate effectively and confidently in language with an emphasis on accurate pronunciation. They engage in discussion of both personal and global significance requiring great commitment to detail, vocabulary, and grammar.

Many of the most important contributions to literature, music, art, film and philosophy come from the French or German-speaking world. We share with our students a sense of curiosity and passion for the language and culture. We go well beyond a purely functional view of language and aim at providing intellectual and linguistic challenges to stretch our students fully.

Our students have access to a wide range of authentic magazines and newspapers as well as to listening materials and numerous online resources. We aim to enable our students to develop a wide and varied vocabulary and excellent grammatical understanding, so that they can successfully manipulate the language and use it creatively. We strongly encourage our pupils to develop their spontaneous speaking and independent learning. We also have a strong focus on self and peer evaluation to help our students become self-aware, independent learners and ultimately to make maximum progress at all times.

We also take part in a range of regional and national competitions such as Spelling Bee or Translation Bee and have consistently reached the national finals and have won the competition! That’s first out of 70,000 entrants!