The Modern Languages Department at St. Mary's is dynamic and vibrant. We offer French, German and Spanish on the curriculum and are able to provide teachers of Italian, Russian, Japanese and Portuguese as extras. Teachers in the department have been at the school between 5 and 17 years and we also have two Assistants every year to help with French and Spanish. We are opening up links with Mary Ward Schools in Germany and Spain and will look at doing Gap year exchanges there. Many of our Sixth formers continue their languages at University and we have an excellent record of acceptance into major universities including Oxford.  We look forward to receiving post cards from our leavers when they go off to travel worldwide. Our department consists of Mrs Alison Maclaine (Head of Dept.), Mrs Fiona Rowland (also Newby Housemistress), Mrs Gill Cork (also Learning Support Co-ordinator), Mrs Dee Webb (also Mary Ward Housemistress and Activities Co-ordinator) and Mrs Giorgia Gotke.

French

French is the main language taught at St. Mary's. Traditionally, we have offered it to all pupils on entry, through GCSE to A level but we do have the opportunity to take pupils at Common Entrance who have done French, Spanish or German. Nevertheless, French remains our most popular language learnt. Our French results are usually excellent and we are proud of our track record in the subject. We have changed our GCSE course to allow pupils to take the Writing Exam instead of the Coursework as it will allow them to prepare better for the writing element of A level, which many of them opt to study.
Our French department is boosted by our Assistant Estelle Richard who is currently spending her fourth year with us.

Spanish

Spanish is taught to all girls in Lower IV for 9 weeks during the year. In Upper IV, girls can choose any two languages from French, Spanish and German with a view to doing any of these for GCSE and A level. We have had some very successful trips to Spain with the 2005 trip being a visit to Madrid, staying with families and including a visit to the Spanish Parliament, thanks to our contacts in Madrid. Our current Spanish assistant from Paraguay is Maria and she is a real gem in the department. Spanish is taught by Mrs Dee Webb and Mrs Giorgia Gotke and is a very popular language worldwide. Many of our girls make Gap Year visits to South America and find knowledge of this language very useful, and some go on to study at university. 

German

This language is offered in a language carousel in Lower IV (year 8) so that all pupils in that year group have the opportunity to learn German, French and Spanish for a block of 9 weeks. They can then choose two of these to continue into Upper IV and although numbers opting for German are limited, we have had excellent results at GCSE and A level. Mary Ward Schools are everywhere in Germany and we have set up links with a school in the world heritage town of Bamberg.  Students from this school have visited us at St Mary's, and we hope to return the visit soon. Mrs Alison Maclaine is responsible for the teaching of German. We are aware that the popularity of other languages, such as Spanish, is on the increase, but there is no denying the importance of German in the business world, nor the recognition of it as an excellent academic subject demanding intelligence and linguistic skill.