GCSE French - Teaching from 2025
For more information on the Professional Learning courses for the new Made-for-Wales GCSEs, please visit the Professional Learning page here.
The GCSE French qualification will support the Curriculum for Wales by:
- Supporting the statements of what matters, giving learners the opportunity to:
- ensure that knowledge and skills in one language are transferred to and developed in other languages
- develop their understanding, empathy and their ability to respond and to mediate effectively
- use languages in order to be effective as they interact, explore ideas, express viewpoints, knowledge and understanding
- provide them with literary experiences that can engage them as listeners, viewers, readers, narrators and creators.
- Supporting the principles of progression by giving learners the opportunity to:
- build on their linguistic skills
- grow holistically in their understanding and purposeful use of languages, literacy and communication
- develop their linguistic repertoire through understanding how their own languages work
- adapt and manipulate language to communicate effectively to a range of different audiences
- develop receptive, interpretive and expressive language skills
- transfer existing knowledge and skills into new contexts including the social and cultural aspects of language.
- Supporting the key considerations for language development by giving learners the opportunity to:
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- develop phonological awareness and phonemic awareness
- continue to progress in all their languages from their different starting points.
The GCSE French qualification will also be based on the following:
- understanding and responding to spoken and written language
- identifying messages and drawing conclusions
- using knowledge of grammar
- translating from and into the language of study
- communicating clearly and effectively in speaking and in writing
- a core vocabulary list based on high frequency vocabulary and everyday language
- using accurate pronunciation and intonation
- using knowledge of cultural and regional familiarity.
Units 1, 3 and 4 will be based on the following broad themes (sub-themes are provided in brackets as examples of what each broad theme could include):
- language for leisure and wellbeing, for example: healthy body, healthy mind, self and relationships, using technology and media
- language for travel, for example: travelling around the world, the culture of where the language is spoken, sustainability
- language for study and work, for example: study and work opportunities, working with languages at home and abroad.
Supporting our Made-for-Wales qualifications with FREE tailored resources
To support our centres in the delivery of our new Made-for-Wales qualifications, we are pleased to confirm that our Digital Resources Team will produce a package of FREE bilingual resources for each subject. This will initially feature 130 packages, which consist of blended learning resources and knowledge organisers for the first group of qualifications which will be taught from September 2025.
Publication schedule
Our Digital Resources Team will be working at pace to produce these new support materials. These will be published in phases beginning from late Autumn 2024, and the full suite of bilingual resources will be available by June 2025.
Further information is available here.
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