ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Aims The English Language course develops knowledge, understanding and skills associated with reading, writing, speaking and listening in English. It explores language use in different kinds of local and global contexts, drawing on the students’ own interests, backgrounds and experiences as a way to encourage a spirit of independent engagement.
Skills The course nurtures capable, thoughtful writers who can communicate meaningfully and accurately in a range of contexts and for different audiences and purposes. Emphasis is placed on oral as well as written uses of language and students are purposefully taught to present, to listen and to work productively with others. Time is also spent developing intrapersonal skills such as confidence, creativity and ethical integrity.
Content Students explore a range of fiction and nonfiction texts( including letters, speeches and various kinds of media article). The components of transactional, persuasive and expressive writing are examined, as well as the ways in which language is reflective of culture, society and identity. Typical examination questions will ask students to analyse the way pieces of writing create atmosphere, how rhetorical devices can be used as persuasive tools and the different levels on which texts can be compared with each other. Writing tasks might include composing a letter to a newspaper editor to complain about gender bias in the media, or a story with the title‘ It was a decision that changed my life’.
Enrichment Students are taken beyond the requirements of the examination syllabus through theatre trips, our Middle School Literary Society and Verve, our creative writing magazine, as well as lots of in-class focus on independent reading, and exploration of the language of film, media and political texts that reflect and shape the way we‘ see’ the world. The English Language course represents an essential part of students’ formative development and teaches a wide range of skills that are necessary for study in the Sixth Form and at university, and for the workplace.
30 THE MIDDLE SCHOOL | AT SEVENOAKS