This article discusses two schemes for teaching writing in schools. One uses analysis of model texts into techniques and devices then application of these by students to their written compositions and one uses a process approach that includes pre-writing and exploring, drafting, sharing and discussing, revising and celebrating to exploit students'…

This essay draws from the experience of observing writing practices in English lessons from 2010-2019, to suggest that the influence of education policy during this phase prioritises preparation for examination questions above the imperatives of learner creativity or volition. Through discussion of ways in which the 'high stakes' examination…

This article examines the deeper purposes behind the teaching of creative writing. To extend an analogy created by William Blake in his poem 'The Tyger', its furnaces are examined and its 'deadly terrors' clasped. It re-interprets the different views of teaching English, as drawn up in the United Kingdom's Cox Report. It argues that these views…

Caribbean students are repeatedly engaged in rigid forms of writing to meet the requirements of external exams, which often leads to negative attitudes to writing. With current shifts to multimodal and multi-literate texts to engage students' multiple literacies in learning, students' creation of graphic novels in Caribbean English classrooms can…

It is now five years since the introduction of the current National Curriculum for English in England; it is just over 50 years since the Dartmouth Conference drew together American and English educationalists. This paper reports on a hermeneutic study that presents voices from the field of English teaching in England. It asks questions of today's…

Decades of theorisation and research on the teaching and learning of second-language writing have hardly created coherent theoretically profound and practically relevant understandings of writing instruction. This article discusses the possibilities and insights created by bringing personal meaningfulness into the realm of writing pedagogy.…

This article outlines some cognitive process models of writing composition. Possible reasons why students' writing capabilities do not match their abilities in some other school subjects are explored. Research findings on the efficacy of process approaches to teaching writing are presented and potential shortcomings are discussed. Product-based…

This article presents two separate but related studies on native-English speaking (NES) instructors' teaching writing practice in Chinese universities. One study is a case study that explores the teaching practice of three NES instructors' writing instruction in a southern Chinese university as well as students' responses to their practice.…

Writing is often a massive challenge for the learners who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Many EFL practitioners are searching for solutions to help learners improve the level of their writing. In this auto-ethnographic study, two narratives are discussed. In the first narrative, the primary challenges of EFL writing encountered by a…

I begin with an account of my own observation of an English lesson taught by one of my student teachers using a teaching resource, "The Island," that I used myself as a new teacher more than 20 years ago and of my own responses on finding it transformed by two decades of change in educational policy and practice. It has become almost a…

Over the past 15 years, there has been a range of standards-driven educational interventions in England: focused particularly on students' writing, they have been targeted at particular students, short-term and based on the assumption that identifiable, quantifiable inputs would produce pre-identified, measurable outputs. This article explores one…

Genre theory has been around for a long time now. The exchange between Michael Rosen and Frances Christie recently featured in "Changing English" is the latest in a series of exchanges between advocates of genre and their critics over the past three decades or so. Our aim in this response-essay is not to weigh up the merits of the cases…

At the dawn of a national curriculum for English in Australia, grammar has appeared without any serious interrogation of the terms of its re-entry and against ambiguous evidence about its value for teaching writing. What kinds of knowledge about language do teachers need in rhetorically productive teaching? This article investigates the potential…

In second-language writing, assessment has traditionally focused on the written products and how well (or badly) students perform in writing. Teachers dominate the assessment process as testers, while students remain passive testees. Assessment is something teachers "do to" rather than '"with" students, mainly for…

This article considers questions surrounding the teaching of writing "from different cultures and traditions", in the context of debates over multiculturalism in Britain today, and contends that English teachers have a vital role to play in the survival and flourishing of multicultural British society. In view of the self-consciously…