Teachers can make English sing…or mute it with a fronted adverbial

English lessons can fire imaginations and open minds, but the DfE should consider five points when implementing recommendations of the curriculum review, says Summer Turner.

My hushed classroom, the sounds of the city thrumming in the background, whilst 15-year-old boys listen to the sound of Sylvia Plath’s poetry before bursting into discussion about what this version of womanhood means compared to the torment of Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew.

After the lesson, we will all go back to the melee of our lives, and they to their adolescence, but there is a sense in which something changed in that moment – a door perhaps began to open, or a hand reached out from the past to take them on a journey.

It is these moments which happen in English lessons when teachers are given the opportunity to make literature the beating heart of their classroom.

Such moments find a similar rhythm when students are given the chance to play with language, manipulate and juggle words and phrases with humour, anger or sorrow.

Yet such beats are reduced to monotone when the lessons are constrained by the repeated horror of extracts and de-contextualised “inference”, or into repeated shoehorning of fronted adverbials into voiceless pieces of writing.

And it is precisely why the curriculum and assessment review drew pleas from teachers and subject communities to tackle the distortions of English that present in key stages 2 and 4.

‘A clear grasp of disciplinary roots’

The panel seemed to listen, with their nods to adjustments needed to be made to key stage 2 grammar, the acknowledgement that literacy and English are distinct from each other and with the role of reading, writing, oracy and grammar being important “not just in English but across all subjects”.

The changes to English language study at key stage 4 suggest a clear grasp of the different disciplinary roots in the study of language compared to literature and how this can be reflected more distinctively in the qualifications.

Finally, they recognised the emancipatory powers of access for all students to our “rich literary heritage” whilst also proposing “a broader range of texts and authors”.

But there are areas to keep an eye on and the openness of some elements of the review leaves much to interpretation.

The mention of the “British Isles” as the area to find more diversity and the argument for more specified content in key stage 3, but also more autonomy over this broader text choice, seems somewhat contradictory.

A reluctance to tackle reductive and generic approaches to teaching “reading” and “writing” particularly in key stage 2 also seems like a missed opportunity.

The “powerful knowledge” philosophy which seems to be threaded through the curriculum and assessment review might be too subtle to hold its ground, and risks being diluted, if not lost, in the implementation phase.

Despite these concerns, there is room for hopeful interpretation.

Five points of guidance

I would offer the following five points of guidance as the DfE firms up this next phase:

1. Don’t lose sight of the strands that make up “English” – language, grammar and literary studies. Any work to specify content in either the national curriculum or in assessment must recognise how these separate disciplines work.
2. Remember that literacy – reading, writing, oracy – are the ways in which we think and express our ideas and are not English-specific concepts.
3. Consider how pairing literary heritage texts with a range of contemporary texts can offer a rich diversity of literature whilst honouring the concept of texts talking to each other across time.
4. Ensure summative assessments don’t drive the curriculum – a year 8 reading test can become a useful indicator of reading ages or can unintentionally reduce reading at key stage 3 to drilling question types and studying extracts.
5. Finally, if you are looking to celebrate oracy in its most meaningful form, let’s pay heed to the role of storytelling and the powerful talk which bursts from us when we have a rich diet of literature that provides mirrors where students can see themselves reflected, windows to enable them to see beyond their own lives, and a community where they can find their place to belong.