Educational linguistics
Having spent seven formative years (1964-71) working for Michael Halliday, I am keen to see more linguistics in schools, whatever we call it – ‘Knowledge About Language’, `Language Awareness’, `English Language’ or even `Linguistics’!
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My ideas
- My book (1992) about grammar teaching
- (2012) an unfinished draft book: Becoming a Grammar Teacher
- My papers about education (mostly about grammar)
- My talks about language education
- My contribution to the Language Log.
- The three ongoing organisations that I helped to found and still contribute to for promoting linguistics in language education:
- CLiE (the Committee for Linguistics in Education).
- the LAGB Education Committee.
- the UK Linguistics Olympiad.
Information pages
General
- A-level in Linguistics (a summary of progress so far in developing a new school-level course in linguistics).
- statistical trends in the language education of England (or the UK)
- official documents about
- historical material on how English and Foreign Languages were taught in the past
Literacy and English language
- The KS1 and KS2 Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) tests.
- official documents
- comments on the SPaG tests
- research on the effects of the SPaG tests
- my own views on the SPaG tests and the 2014 National Curriculum for English
- Some press releases published by an independent educational charity, the Education Media Centre.
- Comment on the background to the 2016 SPaG tests
- Comment on the results of the 2016 SPaG tests
- Surveys of success in literacy teaching
- GCSE English assessment objectives (included in documentation by one exam board, AQA):
- A page of official and factual information about the A-level English Language exam
- (2011) A ‘benchmarking statement’ on degrees in English Language.
Foreign languages
Grammar teaching
- A bibliography of research (and other) works on grammar teaching:
- Research reports and surveys:
- Media comments on grammar teaching.
- A list of UK research projects on the teaching of grammar
- (with Geoff Dean) A website about grammar teaching: Teaching grammar.
Minor research projects
- Some pages about the low status of language in UK universities’ so-called ‘language’ departments:
- the low research status of language
- the lack of language components in undergraduate degrees
- a report from the USA suggesting a similar ‘two-tier’ structure in American universities’ Foreign-language departments.
- a co-signed letter to the Times Higher Education about the low status of English in ‘English’ departments.
- A page about a grammar audit of undergraduates.
- A page about the extremes of multilingualism
- About the world record for the number of languages spoken by individuals and by entire communities.
Training materials for teachers
- Grammar in the Secondary National Strategy (2005)
- A large commentary on the approach to grammar teaching which has been adopted in the Secondary National Strategy (formerly the English strand of the KS3 Strategy, extending the primary-level National Literacy Strategy).
- KS3 grammar (2003)
- A large collection of pages full of basic grammar for secondary (Years 7-9) teachers of English, with some self-test exercises and links to the UK National Curriculum.
- This isn’t yet completely restored, but I’m working on it (March 2016).
- Also available as a zipped file: KS3 grammar
- Grammar in the TES (2002-5)
- A collection of short (450-word) pieces about elementary grammar, called “The writer’s tool-kit”, which I co-wrote with Geoff Barton (a school teacher) for two years. They appeared every week (of term-time) in the Times Educational Supplement.
