Modern Languages

The Department

To have another language is to possess another soul.

Charlemagne (742-814)

Access to a foreign language can bring personal and intellectual satisfaction. It opens up opportunities for meeting people of other nations, experiencing different environments and cultures and taking up residence and work in another area of the world.

At a basic level, language is a means of communicating and receiving messages, of allowing individuals to meet and form friendships and associations. Language enables people to pursue their talents and skills to express their thoughts, ideas and feelings. It also satisfies the intellectual needs of creating order and sense, of the use of memory and reasoning. At another level, the creative use of the imagination can be satisfied, for example in the appreciation of literature.

Every nation values its identity and its language and wishes to preserve and continue its traditions. Knowledge of another people's language makes their existence as real as our own and so we come to evaluate ourselves in comparison with other individuals, social groups and systems.

As a Language Department, we have clear aims and a duty to encourage our students to use their languages for personal and social satisfaction, for use in commercial and diplomatic contexts and for entry into other nations' work forces. With a good working knowledge of other languages our students can become true Europeans - or World Citizens.

All boys in the junior years at Tonbridge study modern languages - boys are expected to study at least one modern language to GCSE level, many take two languages.

Boys entering the school in the Third Form (novi year) continue with a language that they have studied prior to coming to Tonbridge (French, Mandarin or Spanish), and in addition take up a second language, currently German, Mandarin or Spanish. If they studied a second language at their previous school, they can of course continue with both languages. At the end of the Novi Year boys select their modern languages GCSE options.

Termly Topic charts to GCSE:

• French
• German
• Mandarin
• Spanish

At the end of the Fourth Form the top two French sets take an early GCSE. Those pupils who have taken their French GCSE early follow a one-year Italian GCSE course, a one-year AS in Critical Thinking or Unit 1 of the AQA AS French course in the Fifth Form.

In the Sixth Form languages can be combined with most subjects. French (normally four sets and 25 to 40 boys), Spanish (three sets and 25 to 40 boys), German (one set of 5 to 10 boys) and Chinese (one set of 5 to 7 boys) are all offered.

He who knows nothing of foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The Facilities

The department is housed in an attractive detached Georgian building and is well equipped technically: there are nine classrooms all with a full range of audiovisual aids (computer, data projector, sound system, screen and OHP, as well as VCR, CD and DVD players), a department office with resources store, and two further satellite classrooms. In 2005 a new 25-booth digital language laboratory was created using state-of-the-art Sony technology.

The Teachers

There are currently ten full-time and two part-time language teachers who teach French, Spanish, German, Mandarin, Italian and Russian. In addition, we have native-speaking language assistants for French, Spanish, and German. There are also Italian, Japanese and Russian tutors who come in regularly to give private lessons to boys interested in these languages. Lessons can often be arranged in other languages; for example, one boy took lessons in Norwegian last year.

Beyond The Classroom

Native speakers

Boys who speak other languages are encouraged to take a formal qualification in these languages (usually A Level) and private tuition for this can be arranged where required. Languages commonly taken include Italian, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.

Italian GCSE In Sixth Form

The department is also currently running a private Italian GCSE class in the Sixth Form for those who wish to take up a new linguistic challenge.

Russian Beginners Club

There is a Russian beginners' club on a Wednesday afternoon as part of the activities programme.

Modern Languages Society

The Modern Languages Society meets two or three times a term for presentations from outside speakers on a variety of topics.

Overseas Language Trips

There are annual homestay trips to towns in France, Germany, Spain and China. We also run a French GCSE revision and winter sports trip to Verbier in Switzerland which has proved extremely popular with parents and boys alike.

All A level candidates are encouraged to spend at least two weeks at some stage in the country whose language they choose to study. Thanks to a bequest by an Old Boy, most boys studying French in the Lower Sixth are awarded grants by the Dalston Foundation to help finance a homestay language course in Bordeaux or Nice over the Easter or summer holidays.

Gap Years

Boys are also given advice as to how to arrange other language courses, exchanges, work experience and gap years. Finally, gap years often prove popular with linguists and each year several boys spend part of the year working or studying abroad, often in South America, and more recently, in China.

Department Successes

Modern languages study is one of the most popular choice for Tonbridge leavers with between ten and twenty each year applying to read a modern language course post A level. Over the last six years, some 24 Tonbridgians have been successful in their Oxbridge applications and the average A level language result over the last five years is 88% A-B grade at A2 and 87% A-B grade at AS.

Some seven boys - the largest number on record - were offered places to read Modern Languages at Oxbridge in 2010.

For two years consecutively, Tonbridge's Spanish Department has been awarded the Good Schools Guide award for the best results in Spanish AEA examinations taken at an English boys' school

Each year approximately 20 boys take full Italian GCSE in one academic year (actually about nine months) as a post-GCSE French qualification. The results for this have been phenomenal with 79 A*s out of 81 entries. In 2008 three boys were awarded distinctions from Edexcel for being in the top ten in the country.

In 2008, Tonbridge School came second in the national final of the ISMLA French debating competition.