This study investigates cases of language ‘policing’ as educational language policies, and the way that these are represented across different policy levels. Focusing on UK schools and using discursive approaches to language policy as a theoretical framework, I critically examine the motivations and justifications that institutions provide for designing and implementing policies whereby nonstandardised forms are ‘banned’, and how these are reported in metalinguistic discourse. Drawing on a range of data including media discourse, policy documents, teacher interviews and linguistic landscapes, I textually trace how educational language policies (re)produce prescriptive and linguicist ideologies, often using metaphors of crime, and often using language as a proxy for social factors such as academic achievement, employability, and standards. Overall, I argue that micro- and meso-level language policies are a partial product of the linguistic conservatism as found within current macro-level educational policy. (Language policy, language policing, schools, language ideologies)*
This paper draws on research in using reader-response theory as a way of thinking about teaching grammar and poetry in the English classroom. Framing my discussion around world-based models of reader-response such as Transactional Theory (Rosenblatt 1938; 1978) and Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), I argue that this approach is useful in that it foregrounds the creative nature of reading whilst providing a systematic way of analysing language. I analyse data from a series of Key Stage 3 poetry lessons, showing how world-based approaches provide a 'concept-driven pedagogical tool' for the teaching of grammar, giving KS3 students the opportunity to build and develop on KS2 grammatical knowledge. I also show how this approach helped to produce authentic responses to literature and generated meta-reflective discussions on the reading process. I argue that this approach offers an intuitive, accessible and contextualised method to for exploring how language and grammar work. 1 Texts as worlds The human mind has a remarkable capacity and ability to imagine fictional people, events and worlds that are different from our own. This ability is often at its most striking when we encounter literary texts: through language, we can be transported to and immersed within alternative worlds, often so realistic that we feel we are actually a part of them (Gerrig 1993). In a 1992 chapter called Secondary Worlds, Michael Benton begins with a quotation from J.R.R Tolkien, who describes a writer as a 'successful sub-creator' of a secondary world, which a reader's mind has the capacity to enter: Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it […] the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken: the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. (Tolkien 1964: 36).
England has had a schools inspectorate since 1839, first in the form of Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI), and since 1992, in the form of the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted). The inspectorate, a workforce made up of a majority of white inspectors, conduct regular inspections of all state schools in England, producing reports which comment on various aspects of educational provision, including teachers’ and students’ spoken language. In this article we deploy a raciolinguistic genealogy to examine the listening practices of the inspectorate, drawing on historical inspection reports generated from archival work, inspectorate language policy, and a large corpus of contemporary reports. We show how raciolinguistic ideologies are deeply embedded into the sociopolitical culture of the inspectorate, and how these ideologies translate into systems of sonic surveillance in which the nonstandardised language practices of students and teachers are heard as impoverished, deficient, and unsuitable for school. (Raciolinguistics, schools, language policing, standardised English, Ofsted, England, social class, ideology)
Grammar is a key focus of current UK national curriculum policy, at both primary and secondary school level. But grammar policy across these levels is incongruous: at primary level, policy is largely prescriptive, framing language as a system of constraints and rules, whereas at secondary level, policy is much more geared towards descriptive, functional linguistics. Using data acquired from a survey with 275 secondary English teachers and interviews with 24 secondary English teachers, I critically explore how the incongruity of primarysecondary level grammar policy is impacting upon grammar pedagogy at secondary level. Using a combination of thematic and metaphor analysis, I show how many teachers report secondary students conceptualising grammar as a list of technical terms, with little idea or experience of how to use this knowledge in applications such as critical reading or creative writing. I also show how some secondary teachers were aiming to integrate grammar into their teaching, looking to build and develop on the grammatical knowledge students have from primary level. The data show that teacher and student conceptualisations of grammar are shaped by curriculum policy, and I call for a more coherent and coordinated vision of grammar across primary and secondary level.This book will help you to use technology successfully to enhance literacy development at all levels. This practical guide, based on the authors' own classroom research as well as hundreds of published studies, supports teachers' understanding of current technologies and how they can be used as tools to enhance student learning and achievement.Each chapter provides concrete strategies and resources that can be used to engage students, to promote creativity and collaboration, and to empower students to be ready for participation in today's global society.
This article presents an analysis of the standard language ideology within a corpus of school-designed language policy documents from 264 primary schools in England. It examines the processes by which standard language ideological concepts (e.g. 'Standard English', 'correctness', 'hegemony') get textually manifested in school policies, and how these are intertextually and interdiscursively shaped by the broader educational policy context that teachers work in, notably the large-scale curriculum and assessment reforms of National Curriculum 2014. Using tools and methods from critical language policy, I reveal how new meanings emerge in the machinery of the policy-making process and at the contact points between policy levels. I trace how the standard language ideology within government policies gets reconstructed in school policies, with an emphasis on linguistic 'correctness' and the near-exclusive requirement for students and teachers to use standardised English in speech and writing. I discuss policies of surveillance, whereby teachers are discursively constructed and positioned as standard language 'role models': as powerful and authoritative figures who are granted a license to police, regulate and suppress their students' language, whilst also having their own language controlled and monitored. Finally, I argue for the place of critical language awareness within the policy-making process at school level.
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