English Language *
The English language is one of both sublime beauty and awesome power.
For centuries, writers have crafted the English language into words of change, inspiration and enlightenment. It is the language through which Dr Martin Luther King Jr. expressed his “dream”.
It is the language through which Winston Churchill galvanised the British spirit of resilience to overcome the Nazis in our “darkest hour”. It is the language through which Emmeline Pankhurst pledged “freedom or death”.
Study shows that English is the world’s lingua franca. With its plosive consonants, fricatives and nasals it is a strongly stressed language with complex cadences and lends itself well to oratory and rhetoric. Having emerged from the dialects of the Germanic people in the fifth century, English has been augmented and influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages over the centuries, including Latin, Dutch and French. English is a multifarious language, twisted with nuances. George Bernard Shaw famously highlighted the complexities of English spelling saying it was “outside the range of common sanity”, and in modern Britain, we find the way words are spoken and employed is hugely different to the way they are uttered and implemented merely twenty miles down the road: in England alone, there are over thirty regional accents!.
Yet, despite its lack of order, method and common rules found in other languages of the world, English remains the most spoken first language on the planet and continues to be the world’s ‘business language’.
With this rich heritage in mind, we believe it is imperative that our students learn to master the art of both effectively interpreting and skilfully using English language in their written and oral communication. In a world in which spin, fabrication and slander abound, our young people need to be able to look beyond the explicit and grapple with the inference beyond. The power to skilfully employ language lends young people the edge in a world in which effective communication is vital.
Our English language curriculum chooses a rich collection of works for students to analyse, evaluate and respond to. Students explore both fiction and non-fiction texts from across a broad spectrum of time, place and experience. The texts chosen reflect a real diversity of voice, and all schemes encourage students to drill beyond the surface meaning and seize the prevailing message beneath.
English Language Curriculum Map KS3