ABSTRACT
This chapter will explore methods of teaching and learning in the A level English curriculum consisting of both the traditional A level English Literature and the more recent arrival of A level English Language. It draws on two empirical studies: an extensive survey of students’ perceptions of the instructional practices employed by English teachers, carried out by the well-established A Level Information Service (ALIS) project at Newcastle University (Tymms and Vincent 1995) (see Chapters 3 and 7), and a small-scale, intensive study investigating the teaching styles of ten teachers who taught across the two A level English subjects. In the second I used a descriptive system adapted from the study of discourse analysis (Sinclair and Coulthard 1992) to examine the structural complexity or patterning of classroom discourse between teachers and students, in order for comparisons to be made of teaching styles across the two English subjects. The findings of both studies suggest that teachers do not vary their teaching styles, as many commentators suggest.
