# Introduction

This free course, Teaching secondary modern foreign languages, will identify and explore some of the key issues around teaching modern foreign languages (MFL) in secondary schools. Engaging with these issues and debates will help you to reflect upon and develop your practice as a beginner teacher of MFL. You will also develop a greater awareness of the wider context of MFL education and how this affects teaching a language in the secondary school curriculum.

This course is based on a learner-centred approach to teaching, which is underpinned by a constructivist view of learning – the idea that students will construct knowledge and understanding for themselves as a result of classroom activities and experiences.

Now listen to an introduction to this course by its coordinator, Maria Luisa Pérez Cavana:

This browser does not support audio playback.

Transcript

As you work through the activities you will be encouraged to record your thoughts on an idea, an issue or a reading, and how it relates to your practice. Hopefully you will have opportunities to discuss your ideas with colleagues. We therefore suggest that you use a notebook – either physical or electronic – to record your thoughts in a way in which they can easily be retrieved and revisited. If you prefer, however, you can record your ideas in response boxes within the course – in order to do this, and to retrieve your responses, you will need to enrol on the course.

This OpenLearn course is part of a collection of Open University short courses for teachers and student teachers.

OpenLearn - Teaching secondary modern foreign languages
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.