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Do young adult novels have a place in the English curriculum?

Jul 10, 2021 | Category: English

When I got my first teaching job I visited the school at the end of July to find out what I'd be teaching the following September. The Head of Department talked me through which GCSE texts I might wan...

#Arthur Applebee #YA

The problem with 'it makes the reader want to read on'

May 23, 2021 | Category: English

One of the most common and irritating of responses to be found strewn through students' literary or linguistic analysis is that a writer will have a made of particular choice in order to 'make the rea...

Making Meaning in English: An exploration of the role of knowledge in language and literature

Feb 09, 2021 | Category: English

I'm pleased to announce that Making Meaning in English is available now. (Quote MME20 for a 20% discount)The book is a discussion on the role of English as a school subject: What is it for? How has it...

#Making Meaning in English

Using grammar to make meaning

Jan 19, 2021 | Category: English

As a writer I know that I must select studiously the nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, etcetera, and by a careful syntactical arrangement make readers laugh, reflect or riot.Maya Angelou, Conversations...

#grammar #Making Meaning in English

Making analogies in English

Nov 14, 2020 | Category: English

… languages recognized, not as the means of contemporary communication but as investments in thought and records of perceptions and analogical understandings; literatures recognized as the contemplati...

#Making Meaning in English

How to read creatively: noticing in English

Oct 03, 2020 | Category: English

#English #Literature #Reading #Michael Oakeshott #Andrew Bennett #Nicholas Royce #Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trouble with Shakespeare, or Should everything be made simple?

Oct 26, 2019 | Category: English

I'm regularly inundated by unsolicited emails from folk hoping I'll endorse their products. Recently, I received one asking me if I'd be interested in writing about a collaboration between the softwar...

#Shakespeare

The Epistemology of English

Feb 07, 2019 | Category: English

For some time now I've been thinking about how epistemology* - how knowledge is accumulated and divvied up - in English as an academic discipline. While I'm not at all sure that I've accomplished anyt...

#English #epistemology #Natalie Haynes #Robert Eaglestone

A broad and balanced approach to English teaching and the curriculum

Jun 29, 2018 | Category: English

Having launched a stream of invective against the use of 'balance' as a weasel word in my last post, I want to offer a more nuanced take on what I think balance ought to mean.I see the purpose of a cu...

#curriculum #instruction #powerful knowledge #Richard Clark

What can you practise in English lessons?

May 04, 2018 | Category: English

Over my last two posts I've argued that, contrary to popular opinion, English is not a 'skills based' subject. In fact, what appear to be skills are actually composed on many thousands of individual c...

#practice #Daisy Christodoulou #essay writing #The Writing Revolution