Head of Department: Mrs Charlotte Sabnis
The Department offers five main languages: German, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. In addition, pupils can study Russian, Japanese and Arabic on a private basis either for simple pleasure or with the intention of sitting public examinations. We love and encourage the study of all languages and will do our best to support pupils with any linguistic endeavour. In recent years, girls have also studied Polish and Portuguese to public examination level.
We have a team of dedicated teachers who are passionate about languages and who love to share this passion with the pupils. We view languages as a gateway to the heart of other cultures and place cultural immersion at the heart of our teaching, making use of authentic materials in lessons whenever possible. In September 2024, we added over 100 new library books to our MFL collection, including grammar books, bilingual readers, children’s books and foreign literature classics which pupils are free to read at their leisure.
Our desire to bring languages to life is also met by what we do outside the classroom. There is a full and varied programme of events from competitions to theatre visits, and from partnerships with schools internationally to guest speakers. We strongly believe in the importance of native speaker interaction and thus are pleased to run a number of international trips each year and maintain links with a number of schools abroad. Recent super-curricular highlights have been success in the UK Linguistic Olympiad and the British Council and HSBC Mandarin Chinese advanced speaking competition as well as an immersive French cooking experience with an Algerian refugee at a charity in London for our A-level pupils.
Downe House places significant emphasis on forming outward-looking global citizens and, as such, taking a foreign language to GCSE is compulsory. A continuous dialogue about teaching and learning is central to the Department and we feel equally confident in supporting those who find learning languages a real challenge and preparing pupils to excel at A-level and beyond. We have many dual linguists at GCSE and we have impressive numbers continuing with languages at A-level.
Many of our girls continue their language study at university, including Oxbridge, and we are delighted that a number use their linguistic experience from Downe House to pick up new languages at university. As teachers, this continued desire to study languages and explore other cultures first hand at university is a source of great satisfaction and we love to hear of our pupils’ continuing success once they leave Downe House.
Contact Mrs Charlotte Sabnis for more information on our Modern Foreign Languages Department.
Modern Foreign Languages
Read more about the extensive academic enrichment programmes and opportunities we offer at Downe House.
