A FEW months ago, the Department of Education and Science in London published a very important document on the teaching of English. On the teaching of English, that is to say, in Britain (Kingman, 1988). I would like to invite you to consider to what extent -if any -this report has relevance for the teaching of English outside Britain: specifically, in countries such as Japan and Germany, Senegal and India -countries where English is not a native language.But first a word on the report in its own British context. Why did our Secretary of State, Mr Kenneth Baker, decide to set up a distinguished committee of inquiry on this subject? And distinguished it most certainly was: fifteen men and women comprising eminent writers like Antonia Byatt, P J Kavanagh, journalists like Keith Waterhouse, linguists like Henry Widdowson and Gillian Brown; educators like Brian Cox; and there was the broadcaster Robert Robinson, the Oxford professor of poetry Peter Levi, the research industrialist Charles Suckling, the whole committee presided over by the mathematician Sir John Kingman. They were brought together from their diverse fields because the Secretary of State and many others in Britain have been dissatisfied with the teaching of English in British schools: dissatisfied with what is taught, how it is taught, and the results of the teaching as they show in the capabilities of school leavers.

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