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,…

This qualitative study explores Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' perspectives regarding current English Language Teaching (ELT) policies, ELT curriculum, assessment practices, and teacher motivation in the Turkish EFL setting. The study's participants in this study were three native Turkish EFL teachers, teaching at…

This qualitative study explores Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' perspectives regarding current English Language Teaching (ELT) policies, ELT curriculum, assessment practices, and teacher motivation in the Turkish EFL setting. The study's participants in this study were three native Turkish EFL teachers, teaching at…

This article critically examines the literature around grammar and grammatical terminology. It is essentially a critical consideration of the debates in England and Wales in four main parts. Part 1 considers debates in policy, the "What", i.e. grammatical terminology from the perspective of national policy as defined by the English…

This article considers the provision of modern foreign languages (MFL) in England since the 1970s in the context of wider curricular change and also taking into account Europe-wide developments in MFL. It charts the changes implemented over almost three decades to England's National Curriculum for MFL at secondary level (from ages 11 to 16) and…

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…

The place of evidence to inform educational effectiveness has received increasing attention internationally in the last two decades. An important contribution to evidence-informed policy has been greater attention to experimental trials including randomised controlled trials (RCTs). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of evidence,…

It came as a surprise to me, after an extensive Google search and reading of numerous policies, that English, and more specifically Standard Australian English, is not the official language of Australia (ACARA, 2016c; Lo Bianco, 1987). There are examples cited by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (1999) that state, 'English is regarded as…

This study comes in response to recent changes in UK policy, whereby Ancient Greek and Latin have been included alongside modern languages as part of the curriculum at Key Stage 2. It aims to understand how Ancient Greek is surviving and thriving in three different types of schools. After a short overview of the history of Greek teaching in the…

This article uses Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse to account for both the processes by which curriculum change occurs and the failure of efforts to introduce meaningful attention to language structure into national curricula.

In order for schools to develop systematic and realistic strategies for extending children's linguistic repertoires, it is imperative that teachers and allied professionals have access to scientifically informed accounts of the variable but structured nature of the everyday speech used by children. Because there is insufficient information…

While numerous studies in mainstream education have drawn on the Theory of Planned Behaviour to investigate curriculum impact, in English Language Teaching contexts such research is scant. This study applies the theory to anticipate the impact of the Japanese national curriculum for English, by exploring the beliefs of senior high school teachers…

In "The English Patient: English Grammar and teaching in the Twentieth Century", Hudson and Walmsley (2005) contend that the decline of grammar in schools was linked to a similar decline in English universities, where no serious research or teaching on English grammar took place. This article argues that such a decline was due not only…