Key Stage 3 languages · Grammar and vocabulary

KS3 languages: accurate grammar, spelling and accents

Writing in another language is not only about knowing words. Pupils at Key Stage 3 are expected to use accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation, to write prose with a growing range of vocabulary and structures, to write creatively about their own ideas and opinions, and to translate short written text into the language. Small details such as an accent or an ending can change meaning, so accuracy matters.

Accurate grammar and spelling, explained

Accuracy is often the first thing to slip when a child tries something ambitious. The National Curriculum asks pupils to use accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation, and also to write prose using an increasingly wide range of grammar and vocabulary. These two goals can pull in different directions: a child who tries a new structure will make more mistakes. Teachers want both, and the balance moves towards accuracy as the structures become familiar. The language is the one the school teaches, and examples here are in French and Spanish.

Accuracy in grammar means choosing the right verb form and ending, matching adjectives to nouns in gender and number, picking the correct auxiliary verb in past tenses, and keeping word order right. In French, for example, a verb of movement such as aller uses être in the perfect tense (je suis allé), while most verbs use avoir. In Spanish, adjectives and articles agree with the noun (la casa blanca, los coches blancos). These rules are learned gradually and need regular revisiting.

Spelling and accents carry meaning in a way that English does not always prepare children for. French has acute (é), grave (à, è, ù), circumflex (â, ê, î, ô, û), cedilla (ç) and diaeresis (ë, ï). Spanish has the acute accent, the tilde in ñ, and ü. Accents can change the sound of a letter, as with e and é in French, and sometimes they are the only thing that tells two words apart: the French a (has) and à (to or at), ou (or) and où (where), and in Spanish papa (potato) and papá (dad). Spanish also uses ¿ and ¡ at the start of questions and exclamations. Both French and Spanish normally write days, months and languages without a capital letter, and French puts a space before question marks, exclamation marks, colons and semicolons.

Writing prose and creative writing mean going beyond short answers: a paragraph about a holiday, a letter, a description of a person, a story. Teachers expect that pupils will try new language, then check it. Translation into the language is a different skill from free writing, and short pieces are used, so that accuracy can be checked. Good translation is about meaning, not words: “I’m thirteen” becomes “J’ai treize ans” or “Tengo trece años”, literally “I have thirteen years”.

Schools usually teach proofreading as a routine: check verbs first, then agreements, then spelling and accents, then punctuation and capital letters. Pupils often get feedback with a code, such as a mark for verb ending, spelling or word order, and are asked to correct their own errors. This turns mistakes into learning. Dictionaries, verb tables and glossaries are used as tools, not as a replacement for knowing the language.

Words your child will hear

Accent: A mark above (or below) a letter, such as é, à, ç or ñ, that changes the sound or meaning.
Agreement: Matching an adjective, article or participle to its noun in gender and number.
Auxiliary verb: A helping verb, such as avoir or être in French, used with a past participle to form a past tense.
Past participle: The verb form used after an auxiliary in the past, such as joué or allé.
Proofread: To read work carefully, looking for mistakes, and correct them.
Punctuation: Marks such as full stops, commas and question marks. Some, like Spanish ¿ and ¡, differ from English.

What the National Curriculum says

In Key Stage 3, pupils should be taught to:

Use accurate grammar, spelling and punctuation
Write prose using an increasingly wide range of grammar and vocabulary, write creatively to express their own ideas and opinions, and translate short written text accurately into the foreign language

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: proofreading a short paragraph

A pupil wrote this paragraph in French: “Hier, j’ai allé au cinema avec mon amie. Le film était tres bon mais les billets étaient cher.” Find and correct the four mistakes, then explain each one.

Check the verbs first. Aller is a verb of movement that uses être in the perfect tense, not avoir. So “j’ai allé” should be “je suis allé”. A girl writing about herself would add an e: “je suis allée”.
Check the spelling and accents. “Cinema” needs an acute accent: “cinéma”. “Tres” needs a grave accent: “très”. Without the accent, a French reader sees a misspelling.
Check the agreements. “Les billets” is masculine and plural, so the adjective must agree: “étaient chers”, with an s added to cher. The adjective would also change for a feminine noun, such as “les places étaient chères”.
Check the punctuation and capital letters. The sentences start with a capital letter and end with a full stop. Nothing needs changing here, which is also a useful result.
Read it aloud once. A corrected version should sound like French and should say what the writer meant.

Hier, je suis allé au cinéma avec mon amie. Le film était très bon mais les billets étaient chers. (A girl would write “je suis allée”.)

Common mistakes and how to help

Thinking accents do not matter

Missing accents seem to children like small slips, and they are easy to forget when typing. But accents can change meaning, such as a and à in French, ou and où, or papa and papá in Spanish.

What helps: Learn accents as part of the spelling of the word, not as an extra. Learn how to type them: on most phones, holding down a letter shows its accented versions.

Translating word for word from English

A child writes “Je suis treize ans” for “I am thirteen” because each English word has an equivalent. Both French and Spanish use “to have” for age, so the sentence comes out wrong.

What helps: Ask what the whole idea is and what the language says for that idea. Build up a list of phrases that do not translate directly, such as age, hunger and the weather.

Spelling words as they sound in English

Children apply English sound-spelling patterns to the new language, or copy the English spelling of look-alike words, so they write “interesant” in French (one s, as in English) when the correct spelling is “intéressant”, or “differente” in Spanish when it is “diferente”.

What helps: Learn the main sound-spelling patterns of the language. When a word looks like English, check whether the endings and double letters match the new language.

Relying on an online translator instead of building the sentence

Translators give fluent-looking text, which makes it feel finished. But they can pick the wrong meaning of a word, and the child cannot check what they cannot yet read. Teachers can often tell that the work is not the child’s own.

What helps: Use a dictionary to check single words, and build sentences from known patterns. A simpler sentence that your child fully understands is better than an ambitious one they copied.

How to help at home

Make a proofreading routine. Write a short checklist on a card: verbs, agreements, spelling and accents, punctuation. Your child works down the list on every piece of writing, one pass for each item, so each job is small.
Hunt the planted errors. Write two or three sentences copied from their book and put in deliberate mistakes. Your child finds and fixes them, and explains why. You do not need to know the language: they can check against the original.
Practise typing accents. Learn together how to type accents and special letters on the family computer or phone. It is much more likely that accents will be used if typing them is quick.
Keep an error log. Keep a small list of your child’s repeated mistakes, such as a verb ending or a missing accent. Look at the list before each piece of writing. Noticing patterns in mistakes is the first step to fixing them.
Write three sentences a day. Three sentences about the day, with a different structure each time. Short regular writing builds accuracy more safely than one long piece once a week.

Builds on

Key Stage 2: Building vocabulary
Key Stage 2: Using a bilingual dictionary
Key Stage 2: Masculine, feminine and neuter nouns
Key Stage 2: High-frequency verbs
Key Stage 2: Patterns and building sentences
Key Stage 2: Comparing a language with English