Just after the First World War the English Association published The Teaching of English in Schools. It argues that developing children's 'creative spirit' is fundamental to maintaining peace in Europe. Seventy years later, the first National Curriculum promotes a creative, unitary English appropriate for 'a European context'. In contrast, today's…

Creativity is integral to the inquiry process. Inquiry-based work highlights students' understanding of the ways that literature and language mediate lived experiences and social relationships. Within the secondary English classroom, students and teachers can engage in collaborative and imaginative activities to read texts, ask questions, and…

Although use of high-stakes tests is common across developing societies, very little is known about how these tests are designed, what principles and criteria guide test construction, and what factors influence this process. The present study investigates the development of the English Paper-1 test for the Higher Secondary Certificate examination…

This study examines the concerns of Irish secondary school teachers to the introduction of three reformed curricula, namely: English, mathematics, and Design and Communication Graphics. Major changes have been introduced in each of these subjects at different time periods over the past 12 years. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire was selected by…

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated…

Communication is the transfer of any sensation, thought or information to the other side in different ways. The most important means of communication among people is language. Foreign language is called as languages except native language. English is very important as the first foreign language in our country and it has become an effective tool…

Currently, more than 50 of the top 100 YouTube channels feature gameplay, a popularity largely fueled by young audiences. Let's Play videos (often known simply as LPs) typically include gameplay footage accompanied by simultaneous commentary recorded by the player. This article explores three ways English educators might use Let's Play videos and…

It is aimed, in this study, to compare the achievement level of the students taught with the fifth grade intensive English language curriculum (IELC) and the ones taught with the fifth grade English language curriculum (ELC) in terms of their speaking skills. With this aim, it is also intended to find out the failure behind the students' speaking…

The introduction of the Literature strand within the Australian Curriculum requires all teachers to engage students in print and digital literature that embrace the cross-curriculum priorities and support students to examine, evaluate, and discuss literary texts. However, such curriculum change assumes that primary school teachers who have often…

This paper gives a brief summary of Halliday's theory of how children learn to talk, illustrating the development of children's language from the microfunctions through the macrofunctions and into the metafunctions of adult language. The paper points to a possible source of the misinterpretation of Halliday's theory in the work of Frank Smith…

This article reports the results of a survey of UK Higher Education Institution (HEI) providers of undergraduate degree programmes in English. The survey solicited HEI providers' views on how well each of the A Levels in English prepares students for degree programmes, and asked which of the three A Levels are included in the entry requirements…

Research related to English as Foreign Language (EFL) curricula in Colombia is scant and mainly focuses on the analysis of policies and the challenges they pose to institutions. Consequently, there is a need for studies of EFL curricula in place in Colombia to serve as basis for evaluation and adjustment of current educational policies. This…

This article draws on Donna Haraway's call for feminist speculative fabulation as an approach to qualitative research methodologies and writing praxis in schools. The first section of the article outlines how I conceptualize speculative thought, through different philosophers and theorists, and provides a brief literature review of speculative…

A lack of horizontal and vertical alignment of the English language arts (ELA) curriculum exists at Lakeside High School (LHS) (pseudonym). This problem was revealed by the diverse interpretations of the ELA state standards by teachers, driven by the wide-range of teachers' beliefs about ELA instruction. Failure to establish an effective culture…

In this article, the authors describe how integrating music with reading and writing practices stimulated transmediation to (1) honor musical students' identities, (2) deepen readers' meaning making with literature, and (3) invite writers' memories to generate emotional grist for composing poetry. The authors share examples to inspire teachers to…