LANGUAGES
LANGUAGE CLASSES TODAY
The Language classes students attend today are quite different to the Languages education parents would have experienced when they were at school.
Students are able to visit countries where the languages are spoken via YouTube clips and virtual reality goggles. They have music in Languages and authentic texts available at their fingertips.
The use of technology offers student online learning software to revise words and grammatical structures, e.g. through Education Perfect. Students in Year 10 are using ImmerseMe, a tool to improve their aural and oral communication skills in real-life scenarios filmed in authentic places around the world. A sound file of the correct pronunciation of each word can be found on nearly every translation program. LyricsTraining allows students to learn languages with their favourite music.
Learning games such as Kahoot, Quizlet, Quizizz or LyricsTraining allow students to learn words in an enjoyable and competitive way.
Technology has become a helpful tool to learn languages, but our classrooms are of course also focussed on practising speaking and writing in the language. The communicative approach of language teaching introduces students to relevant conversation for everyday use from Year 7 to Year 12, including culturally specific variances.
The multilingual background of our students at McKinnon is used to develop intercultural capability, an acceptance and appreciation of different cultures, by working on and sharing information in pairs, small groups or class discussions.
Texts provided in online books by Oxford University Press, student magazines and online texts provide authentic language in spoken, viewed and written form.
The students' writing is developed from simple modelled examples and grammatical concepts to more complex ones. Writing by hand is highly encouraged to increase the students’ ability to create original texts.
Resources and support materials to engage all kinds of learners are offered on Google sites or shared in Google classrooms. Our aim is to provide a program for all learners; we differentiate and extend where the need arises.
Additional opportunities such as competitions, film festivals, the Intergenerational Conversation or Model UN programs add to the great offer language students experience at McKinnon Secondary College.
McKinnon supports the learning of all background languages that our students speak and encourages all students to study a language for VCE to increase their employability for the future.
This Scottish Education site provides advice on how parents can support a child’s language learning.
If you would like to read more about the benefits of bilingualism, please click here
Andrea Fowler
Head of Languages