At Chigwell students have the opportunity to learn two modern languages: French and either Spanish or German.

Lower One pupils (Year 3) start with French, which stays compulsory until the end of Year 8. In Year 7 pupils start their second modern language, either German or Spanish. They undergo a brief taster course of a few weeks in each at the start of the year and are then given a free choice between them. At the start of Remove (Year 9) students are asked to drop one of French, German/Spanish and Classics. All students study at least one modern language for their GCSE course, and we strongly encourage the more talented linguists to study two.

Whilst supporting the idea of a communicative approach of language acquisition, the modern foreign languages department emphasises the systematic learning of grammar from an early age onwards. We follow the Edexcel GCSE specification in French, Spanish and German, and also for A level.

Three native speaker foreign language assistants from France, Germany and Spain help develop the linguistic competence of our students. All students from GCSE age up benefit from the active involvement of our assistants: VI Form groups have additional lessons in very small groups with the assistants to prepare their oral examinations.

We currently organise a long-running German exchange to Hamburg in February half term as well as a trip to Spain for our hispanists at the same time. For the last few years we have taken French GCSE students to Brussels or Paris in June, and arranged a day trip to Boulogne for III Form pupils (Year 7) in April or May.

From time to time we participate in competitions out of school and like to think that our linguists are as good as if not better than those from other schools! In recent years we have sent VI Form teams to participate in an annual French debating competition for independent schools in the north of London, defeating Goldolphin and Latymer and Highgate schools on the way, had one of our GCSE students selected for the UK final of the Spanish government's Ruta Quetzal worldwide competition for 16 and 17 year old students, and had four VI Form students enter Canning House’s national Spanish essay writing competition.

We run an extra curricular Mandarin club for students in the III Form and above and parents might like to know that we ran a popular evening course in basic Spanish for adults in May and June 2009 and plan to do the same this academic year.