This section outlines the breadth of the subject on which teachers should draw when teaching the key concepts and key processes.

The study of English should enable students to apply their knowledge, skills and understanding to relevant real-world situations.

3.1 Speaking and listening

The range of speaking and listening activities should include:
a. prepared, formal presentations and debates in contexts where the audience and topic are unfamiliar
b. informal and formal group or pair discussions requiring students to take on a range of roles
c. individual and group improvisation and performance.

The range of purposes for speaking and listening should include:
d. describing, narrating, explaining, informing, persuading, entertaining, hypothesising; and exploring and expressing ideas, feelings and opinions. The stimulus for speaking and listening activities should include those drawn from work contexts and other real-life uses.

3.2 Reading

The texts chosen should:
a. be of high quality, among the best of their type, that will encourage students to appreciate their characteristics and how, in some cases, they have influenced culture and thinking
b. be interesting and engaging, allowing students to explore their present situation or move beyond it to experience different times, cultures, viewpoints and situations
c. be challenging, using language imaginatively to create new meanings and effects, and encouraging students to try such writing for themselves
d. allow students to experience depth and breadth in their reading, enabling them to make connections across texts.

The range of literature studied should include:
e. stories, poetry and drama drawn from different historical times, including contemporary writers
f. texts that enable students to understand the nature, significance and influence over time of texts from the English literary heritage. This should include work selected from the following pre-twentieth-century writers: Matthew Arnold, Jane Austen, William Blake, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Robert Browning, John Bunyan, Lord Byron, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Congreve, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, John Donne, John Dryden, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Hardy, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henry James, John Keats, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Alexander Pope, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, RB Sheridan, Edmund Spenser, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, Henry Vaughan, HG Wells, Oscar Wilde, William Wordsworth and Sir Thomas Wyatt
g. texts that enable students to make connections between experiences across time and literary traditions
h. texts that enable students to analyse the values and assumptions of writing from different cultures and traditions, relating and connecting them to their own experience
i. at least one play by Shakespeare.

The range of non-fiction and non-literary texts studied should include:
j. forms such as journalism, travel writing, essays, reportage, literary non-fiction, print media and multimodal texts including film and television
k. purposes such as to instruct, inform, explain, describe, analyse, review, discuss and persuade.

3.3 Writing

In their writing students should:
a. develop and sustain ideas, themes, imagery, settings and characters when writing to imagine, explore and entertain
b. analyse and evaluate subject matter, supporting views and opinions with a range of evidence
c. develop and sustain ideas and views cogently and persuasively
d. use formal, impersonal and concise expression to explain or describe information and ideas relevantly and clearly.

The forms for such writing should be drawn from different kinds of:
e. stories, poems, play scripts, autobiographies, screenplays, diaries, minutes, accounts, information leaflets, plans, summaries, brochures, advertisements, editorials, articles and letters conveying opinions, campaign literature, polemics, reviews, commentaries, articles, essays and reports.

3.4 Language structure and variation

The study of English should include, across speaking and listening, reading and writing:
a. spoken language variation and attitudes to use of standard and non-standard forms
b. the ways in which language reflects identity through regional, social and personal variation and diversity
c. the differences between spoken and written language in terms of vocabulary, structure and grammar
d. the importance of sentence grammar and whole-text cohesion and their impact in writing
e. the development of English, including its development over time, current influences, borrowings from other languages, origins of words and the impact of technology on spoken and written communication
f. the importance and influence of English as a global language.

Explanatory notes

High quality: Both fiction and non-fiction texts selected must be rich and substantial enough to engage readers intellectually and emotionally. High-quality texts encourage students to explore ideas, themes and language in ways that relate to their own experiences, and also develop their understanding of less familiar viewpoints and situations.

Influenced culture and thinking: This includes texts that are widely known, referred to and quoted, and have become part of the cultural fabric of society through their language and the way in which they present ideas, themes and issues. They could be texts that stimulate social conscience and challenge preconceptions and particular viewpoints. They provide social and cultural commentaries that illuminate, provoke and encourage reflection.

Explore their present situation: The choice of texts should be informed by the cultural context of the school and experiences of the students. It could include texts that:

  • help students explore their own sense of identity and reflect on their own values, attitudes and assumptions about other people, times and places, either through continuity or contrast with their own experiences
  • explore common experiences in different and unfamiliar contexts (time, place and culture).

Make connections across texts: Clustering texts according to themes that cut across periods and genres is particularly useful in supporting an integrated approach to teaching. Themes could include images of men and women, place and identity, and narrative voice/viewpoint.

Contemporary writers: This includes texts written for young people as well as adults and a wide range of recent and contemporary writing, such as historical, crime, science fiction and fantasy. Students should be encouraged to be ambitious in their reading, experimenting with new texts, authors and genres, particularly in their individual reading.

Texts appropriate for study at Key Stage 4 include some works by the following authors: Douglas Adams, Richard Adams, Fleur Adcock, Isabel Allende, Simon Armitage, Alan Ayckbourn, JG Ballard, Pat Barker, Alan Bennett, Alan Bleasdale, Bill Bryson, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, Brian Clark, Gillian Clarke, Robert Cormier, Jennifer Donnelly, Keith Douglas, Roddy Doyle, Carol Ann Duffy, UA Fanthorpe, John Fowles, Brian Friel, Mark Haddon, Willis Hall, David Hare, Tony Harrison, Susan Hill, SE Hinton, Jackie Kay, Harper Lee, Laurie Lee, Andrea Levy, Joan Lingard, Penelope Lively, Liz Lochhead, Mal Peet, Peter Porter, Philip Pullman, Willy Russell, Jo Shapcott and Zadie Smith.

Other appropriate contemporary writers are included in the list of writers from different cultures and traditions (below).

The English literary heritage: This includes authors with an enduring appeal that transcends the period in which they were writing. For example, the novels of Jane Austen or the plays of Shakespeare continue to be widely read, studied and reinterpreted in print and on screen for contemporary audiences. The study of texts by these authors should be based on whole texts and presented in ways that will engage students (eg supported by the use of film resources and drama activities).

Writers from the English literary heritage during the twentieth century include: Kingsley Amis, WH Auden, TS Eliot, EM Forster, Robert Frost, William Golding, Graham Greene, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Aldous Huxley, Elizabeth Jennings, James Joyce, Philip Larkin, DH Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, Sean O’Casey, George Orwell, Wilfred Owen, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, JB Priestley, Siegfried Sassoon, Peter Shaffer, George Bernard Shaw, RC Sherriff, Stevie Smith, Muriel Spark, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas, RS Thomas, William Trevor, Evelyn Waugh, Arnold Wesker, John Wyndham and WB Yeats.

From different cultures and traditions: When choosing texts from different cultures and traditions, it is important to look for authors who are so familiar with a particular culture or country that they represent it sensitively and with understanding. The texts should help students learn about the literature of another culture, as well as reflect on their own experiences.

Texts appropriate for study at Key Stage 4 include some works by the following authors: Chinua Achebe, John Agard, Monica Ali, Moniza Alvi, Maya Angelou, Isaac Bashevis Singer, James Berry, Edward Braithwaite, Anita Desai, Emily Dickinson, F Scott Fitzgerald, Athol Fugard, Jamila Gavin, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Arthur Miller, Les Murray, Beverly Naidoo, RK Narayan, Grace Nichols, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Bali Rai, Wole Soyinka, John Steinbeck, Meera Syal, Mildred D Taylor, Mark Twain, Derek Walcott, Walt Whitman, Tennessee Williams, Adeline Yen Mah and Benjamin Zephaniah. The study of texts by these authors should be based on whole texts and presented in ways that will engage students.

At least one play by Shakespeare: The study of Shakespeare should be based on whole texts, presented in lively, active ways that encourage students to develop independent, critical interpretations and responses. Students develop their interpretive and analytical skills through seeing the play in terms of its social and historical context and significance.

The ways in which language reflects identity: These could include accent, dialect, idiolect, lexical change, varieties of standard English such as Creole, occupational variation, and differences in language use according to age or gender.