Teaching Secondary English Series – serie

This book is aimed at new teachers and at teachers new to the teaching of English. Its main focus is the secondary classroom, but primary teachers too will find here much to interest them. Taking the National Curriculum in English as a starting point, but not necessarily the last word on the subject, Robert Jeffcoate looks at the theoretical issues involved in thinking about what English means, defining goals and planning the curriculum. He shows the how to go about developing a repertoire of skills in the different curriculum areas from drama teaching to teaching about the language. His suggestions are illustrated with detailed examples of classroom practice and with many quotations from pupils' own work.

In this radical exploration, Nick Peim, himself a practising English teacher, shows how teachers can use critical theory to bring students' own experience back into the subject. The author explains how the insights of discourse theory, psychoanalysis, semiotics and deconstruction can be used on the material of modern culture as well as on and in oral work. The book is written in a style which even those with no background in critical theory will find approachable, and arguments are backed up with practical classroom examples.