IB CP Service Learning
(This will be named Language and Cultural Studies from Sept 2025)

Language Development is part of the IBCP Core that ensures that all students have access to and are exposed to a language programme that will assist and further their understanding of the wider world. The ability to communicate in more than one language is essential to the IB’s concept of an international education. 

Language development encourages students to improve their proficiency in a language other than their best language. 

Students will devote a minimum of 50 hours to language development.

Students will maintain, and complete, a portfolio to document their learning and provide evidence of language engagement and development. 

The aims of language development are to: 

• enable students to understand and use the language they have studied in context 

• encourage an awareness and appreciation of the different perspectives of people from other cultures 

• provide students with a basis for further study, work and leisure through the use of an additional language 

• provide the opportunity for enjoyment, creativity and intellectual stimulation through knowledge of an additional language. 

In language development, the objectives are organised into four communicative processes: 

1. Oral communication 

2. Visual interpretation 

3. Reading comprehension 

4. Writing 

The objectives are skills-based. The cognitive, linguistic and sociocultural aspects of communication intertwine within each of the four objectives. 

Students are expected to develop the competencies to communicate: 

• appropriately, accurately and effectively 

• in an increasing range of social, cultural and academic contexts 

• for an increasing variety of purposes.