Ofsted's 2021 Curriculum Research Review outlines a language pedagogy predicated on an exclusively cognitivist approach to language learning, which relies on three 'pillars of progression': phonics, vocabulary and grammar. The review makes a brief acknowledgement of the importance of motivational factors, including 'pupils' positive views of…

This article critiques the current arrangements for the assessment and testing of English in early-years settings and primary schools in England. It is broadly supportive of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile. It is highly critical of the Year 1 phonics check, and of the tests of reading and of grammar, punctuation and spelling at the end of…

Introduction: Many ESL college students have reading comprehension problems in English, such as difficulty understanding ideas explicitly or implicitly stated in a text, making inferences, and inferring meanings of difficult words from context. Aims: The article proposes the integration of inspirational quotes in the teaching of English to EFL…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…

Approximately two-thirds of community college students nationwide are considered to not be ready for the demands of college and are therefore required to enroll in at least one developmental education course. Unfortunately, researchers have found that enrollment in developmental classes often has adverse effects on community college students and…

This article looks at the changes made to examinations in England over recent decades and asks about the politics behind the changes. It considers how increasingly centralised the assessment regime has become, moving from a system where teachers could have a say in how pupils are assessed to a regime dominated by government approved tests. It…

To date there have been no systematic studies examining the ways in which teachers in England focus and adapt their teaching of writing. The current study addresses this gap by investigating the nature and frequency of teachers' approaches to the teaching of writing in a sample of English primary schools, using the "simple view of…

Recent neurological breakthroughs in our understanding of the Critical Period Hypothesis and prosody may suggest strategies on how phonics instruction could improve L2 language learning and in particular phoneme/grapheme decoding. We therefore conducted a randomised controlled-trial on the application of prosody and phonics techniques, to improve…