The language of English at the transition

Abstract

In this chapter, literature relating to the teaching of English language and English literature is reviewed and a comparative analysis of the ‘aboutness’ of the language in the Key Stage 2 (KS2) and Key Stage 3 (KS3) English sub-corpora and a modified version of the BNC2014 Baby+ is presented. It is argued that statutory testing and current policy may have a washback effect on English teaching, focusing on areas such as sentence grammar, meaning that activities such as reading for pleasure or developing an understanding of authorial choice and effect are relatively neglected. While inferencing is a key skill for KS3, the analyses described here found little language that would support learning about inference-making in the KS3 English sub-corpus. The language of English teaching was found to differ from everyday language. Four patterns of divergence between in-school and everyday uses of polysemous words are detailed. Differences in language used in the KS2 and KS3 sub-corpora are also described: while language in the KS2 sub-corpus deals primarily with the grammar of phrases, clauses and sentences, language in the KS3 sub-corpus tends to focus on discourse structure and the acts of writing and reading.