Italian
Why Study Italian?
At Beaulieu, it is our intent to encourage all pupils to develop the skills, knowledge, and cultural understanding necessary to become confident, capable communicators in a foreign language. Our curriculum aims to ignite curiosity, promote cross-cultural awareness, and prepare students for global citizenship by equipping them with practical language skills for real-world use.
Cultural awareness: Students learn to appreciate and respect different cultures and know where Italian is spoken.
Communication skills: Students develop the ability to speak, write, read, and understand foreign languages.
Academic achievement: Students gain language qualifications that will support their future opportunities.
Global citizenship: Students become more confident and prepared for an interconnected world.
Year 7
All Year 7 students have a one-term introduction to Italian to help them choose which ‘second language’ they might prefer to study in Year 8, and possibly as a GCSE.
Topics covered during the term include: facts about Italy; alphabet; numbers, days, months; greetings and introductions; how are you?; birthdays; ages; animals; colours and family. Students will also learn about Italian culture and seasonal celebrations.
Year 8
In Year 8, students can choose whether to learn Italian, Spanish or German alongside their French lessons.
Year 8 Italian lessons develop and build on the basic vocabulary and skills learned in Year 7. Pupils continue to develop skills in Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, as well as learning more about Italian culture and festivals throughout the year. The topics being covered this year include: Facts about Italy and Italian gestures, Describing yourself, your appearance and your personality; Friends; Family; Where you live; School subjects; School life; Food and drink; Places in town; Directions; Film genres and opinions. Grammatical concepts are introduced throughout the course. At the end of each topic, students are given end-of-unit assessments in different skills to help consolidate learning and monitor progress.
Year 9
In Year 9, students can study Italian as a GCSE option subject.
In Year 9 Italian lessons, we further develop the skills learned in Year 8 by starting to follow more specifically the AQA GCSE specification and coursebooks. Students will cover the four skills of Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing and continue to build their Italian cultural awareness throughout the year. At the end of each topic, students are given end-of-unit GCSE-style assessments in different skills to help reinforce learning and monitor progress.
In Year 9, we cover the topics of: clothes, Italian fashion and style; weather; sports; healthy lifestyle; free time activities including music, films, TV and books; daily routine; home; town and regions. Grammar is interspersed throughout the course and the main grammar points covered this year include: Tenses (present, conditional, imperfect, perfect, future); time phrases; adverbs of frequency; reflexive verbs; modal verbs; comparisons; connectives.
Year 10
In Year 10, we focus on following the AQA GCSE Italian Specification and coursebooks as we prepare students for their exams the following year. Students continue to hone the four skills of Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing through regular practice and end-of-topic GCSE-style assessments and at the end of the year, the aim is to complete a full set of GCSE exam papers so that students know what they are working towards in Year 11. We focus on the following GCSE topics this year: Self and family; relationships; technology; customs and festivals; jobs and ambitions and travel and tourism. Students will also continue to develop their grammar, in particular the use of different tenses, sentence formations, negatives, adjectives, prepositions and start to use more complex structures.
Year 11
In the first term of Year 11, we aim to finish the GCSE course and cover the topics of school, global issues, the environment and social issues. The main focus for the remainder of the year is exam revision and preparation, as well as revisiting topics when necessary. Students will complete GCSE-style assessments during the year, but the main assessments are the mock examinations in January and the real examinations in the summer.
To prepare for the GCSE examinations, students will regularly practise the four skills of Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing using practice exam papers and GCSE resources. At this stage, students should be developing their use of the language by applying the grammar and topic vocabulary that they have learnt over the last two years to different situations and exam questions.