This best-selling textbook combines theory and practice to present a broad introduction to the opportunities and challenges of teaching English in secondary school classrooms. Each chapter explains the background to current debates about teaching the subject and provides tasks, teaching ideas, and further reading to explore issues and ideas in relation to school experience.

Already a major text for many university teaching courses, this new edition has been thoroughly updated in the light of new legislation and includes fresh chapters on the National Literacy Strategy, Media and ICT. Other chapters suggest a broad range of approaches to teaching such crucial areas as:

• reading and writing, speaking and listening
• drama, media studies and information technology
• grammar, poetry and language study
• Shakespeare
• post-16 English language and literature

Written particularly with the new and student teacher in mind, this book offers principles and practical examples of teaching and learning in a twenty-first century context as new notions of literacy compete with demands of national assessment. Taking these changing ideologies as a starting point, the text also addresses questions about the nature of teacher education. It raises issues concerning competence-based courses, working with a mentor in school and monitoring the development of a student teacher.