Modern Languages (Elective from Year 4)

Modern Languages are introduced as an elective subject in the Swedish compulsory school starting in Year 4 (mellanstadiet). The curriculum emphasizes developing communicative skills, cultural understanding, and language awareness.

Aims and Objectives

The primary aim is to foster confident communication in the target language across different situations and purposes. Students develop skills in understanding (reception) and expressing themselves (production and interaction) in both spoken and written forms. The curriculum also promotes language awareness, understanding how language is learned and used. Furthermore, it aims to cultivate curiosity about language and culture, encouraging multilingualism by highlighting how skills in different languages can reinforce each other.

Curriculum Structure (Years 4-9)

The Modern Languages curriculum is structured across different levels, building upon previous knowledge and skills. The core content focuses on communication, reception, and production and interaction.

Years 4-6: Focus on foundational language skills.

• Content of Communication: Personal information, familiar subjects, everyday situations, interests, people, places, and basic expressions of opinions and emotions. Daily life and lifestyles in different contexts where the language is spoken.
• Reception: Understanding clearly spoken language and simple texts, including those from various media, combined with illustrations. Simple dialogues and conversations, songs, rhymes, and basic information. Developing strategies for understanding keywords and drawing conclusions from context.
• Production and Interaction: Simple presentations, instructions, messages, descriptions, and dialogues in speech and writing. Strategies for overcoming language difficulties in conversations, such as using gestures and questions. Focus on correct pronunciation and intonation.

Years 7-9: Expanding language skills and cultural understanding.

• Content of Communication: Building upon the foundation from Years 4-6, expanding to include activities, events, experiences, and more nuanced expressions of opinions and emotions. Exploring daily life, lifestyles, and social relations in different contexts.
• Reception: Understanding clearly spoken language and more complex texts, including dialogues, interviews, narratives, fiction, songs, poetry, and news items. Developing strategies for understanding context and adapting listening and reading skills. Exploring language phenomena like pronunciation, intonation, grammatical structures, and fixed expressions.
• Production and Interaction: More complex presentations, instructions, messages, stories, and descriptions in coherent speech and writing. Developing strategies for participating in discussions and solving language problems. Focus on language accuracy and adapting language to different purposes and audiences.

Language Choices

While the specific languages offered can vary between schools, common choices include French, Spanish, and German. Some schools also offer Chinese.

Chinese Language Curriculum

The curriculum for Chinese language follows a similar structure as other modern languages but includes specific components related to the unique characteristics of the language. It incorporates Pinyin as a support for pronunciation and vocabulary development, and addresses the use of simplified Chinese characters in reading and writing. The curriculum progresses from basic pronunciation and sentence structures in the earlier years to more complex communication and deeper cultural understanding in later years.