The current national curriculum programme of study for English makes 15 references to ‘Standard English’ (and one to ‘non-Standard English’) in its coverage of all key stages. The focus is very much on the use of ‘Standard English’ (defined – or rather not defined in a separate glossary), with the comment that ‘The aim of the national curriculum is that everyone should be able to use Standard English as needed in writing and in relatively formal speaking’.
There are three references to knowing about ‘Standard English’: one is in the non-statutory notes and guidance for Key Stage 2 where this point is made: ‘At this stage, pupils should start to learn about some of the differences between Standard English and non-Standard English and begin to apply what they have learnt, for example, in writing dialogue for characters’.
For secondary English, the references to knowing about ‘Standard English’ are in relation to the subheading Grammar and Vocabulary for Key Stage 3: ‘knowing and understanding the differences between spoken and written language, including differences associated with formal and informal registers, and between Standard English and other varieties of English’ and for the same subheading in Key Stage 4: ‘analysing some of the differences between spoken and written language, including differences associated with formal and informal registers, and between Standard English and other varieties of English’.
Having said that, anyone who has taught the existing English Language GCSE knows that none of this – admittedly slight - knowledge about ‘Standard English’ is ever actually assessed in the terminal exams.
You might wonder if I am being arch by putting ‘Standard English’ in quote marks, but that’s only because it is a term that linguists argue about and if the national curriculum writers (linguists among them) struggle to clearly define it in a document aimed at teachers, perhaps we should be wary of using it, without asking what it actually is. One aspect of this argument is the question of whether there is such a thing as standard spoken English, or whether any discussion of a standard is only relevant at all to written forms. This is particularly important to be clear about given the emphasis on oracy in the Curriculum and Assessment Review and recent indications that oracy will be a key component of the new National Curriculum. The way that teachers respond to students’ spoken contributions will depend on a sound understanding of the relationship between any notion of a standard, the many varieties of spoken English and the relationship between speech and identity. There needs to be a coherent thread and joined up thinking in teaching about standard English and the ways schools value the language of their students.
And that’s where there is in fact a gap for the new English curriculum to help us all: why not explore what we mean by ‘Standard English’ (or ‘standard English’, or even ‘standardised English’) with Key Stage 3 & 4 students, looking at what it is, how it came about, what’s happening to it now and why it’s such a slippery term? And as teachers, we could think about the terminology too. Does a ‘standard’ always imply a hierarchy, where one version is always ‘better’ than another? Why capitalise both words? Does this confer some kind of status, or suggest that it is a fixed, unyielding monolith? And what about that pesky ‘-ised’ suffix? Is that just some woke affectation or a deliberate attempt to draw attention to the process behind the ‘thing’? You can probably guess where I stand on this, as a linguist!
Discussing spoken and written forms, formal and informal registers and ‘other varieties of English’, as the current curriculum says, definitely gives us a point of entry but it also misses part of the story: why do we need it and what is it for?
A practical starting point might be to give Key Stage 3 students a set of examples and ask them to place them on a basic continuum line. Which are the most and the least ‘standard’ (however they want to define that) and where do the others fall along that line? What is it about them that makes them think that?
For example, what’s ‘standard or ‘non-standard’ about the title I have used for this piece?
i dont care if its acurate as long as it makes sense im happy
Students might talk about the capitalisation (or lack of it), some of the punctuation and spelling that’s used (or not), and there might even be some discussion of sentence grammar: where could some sentences end and others begin and why might that matter? The discussion can then lead on to context: where might this kind of text appear and why might ‘standards’ not be as important in those contexts?
On one level at least, this is all linked to mode and form. The example above is written (or typed) on the (virtual) page, but it could easily have appeared on a screen and what about if we had spoken those words? There would not be any punctuation or capitalisation if it had been spoken, and no one ‘hears’ spelling (unless it’s ‘should of’…) so why are sentences, full stops and commas important if we can’t actually hear them? And what about the message, rather than the medium? Is that something students might agree with? Does it in fact ‘make sense’?
The next stage might involve using a statement bank, asking students to rate the statements and/or choose the ones they agree with most or least. Here are some examples that could be used:
- We need to follow strict rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling in all forms of communication or other people won’t understand us.
- Communication is a two-way street: sometimes the person reading or listening just needs to try a bit harder.
- Standards are important: if we don’t use good English, other people will judge us harshly.
- Some forms of ‘non-standard English’ like slang and dialect can be very powerful.
- Being able to switch between different styles when we use different types of communication is more important than following made-up rules all the time.
- The main point of communication is for other people to understand us: if understanding happens, nothing else matters.
- Some rules are old-fashioned, based on types of communication that we do not use as much these days and that don’t matter as much as they used to.
- ‘Standard English’ is an elitist and discriminatory concept that needs to be challenged.
- ‘Standard English’ is just better than other forms of English.
- Breaking rules can be a creative way to use language.
Many of these open up discussions about language that A level English Language teachers will be very familiar with, but they are not necessarily that difficult for Key Stage 3 and 4 teachers to find out more about, and with some good, targeted subject knowledge CPD, a bit of wider reading and some confidence, the discussions can open up into an exploration of what we mean by standard English, the process of ‘standardisation’, when it happened (or indeed how it is still happening, if we want to look for example at the new ‘rules’ of online communication), who was behind it, why it has such a huge impact on education and what the objections to it might be.
The new curriculum offers us all the chance to really know more about ‘Standard English’, not just teaching students about using it – although, we can all see how important that might be in certain contexts – and it also offers us the chance to assess this knowledge as part of a proper English Language GCSE where students’ knowledge about language can be brought to bear on wider issues that relate to the real world of language around them all the time.
Suggested reading:
KS3 Language Laboratory, EMC 2018
The Stories of English, David Crystal, Penguin 2005
Attitudes to Language, Dan Clayton, CUP 2018
Language Change, Ian Cushing, CUP 2018
Knowing About Language: Linguistics and the Secondary English Classroom, Dan Clayton and Marcello Giovanelli, Routledge 2016
Other EMC Curriculum Think Pieces
EMC Thinking About Curriculum - An Introduction
The Future of English Language at KS3 + KS4
Talk in the New National Curriculum
