ABSTRACT
English students are sometimes discombobulated by critics disagreeing about what a work of literature means, how good it is, how to approach it and even the point of what they are doing. Thinking about English as a discipline, with its many different strands, helps resolve some of these difficulties. Disciplinary consciousness represents the idea of 'metacognition': knowing not just the content of a subject but also knowing what people are doing and why. As the world becomes more information rich, and people can discover facts instantaneously, knowing why they are important and what they mean is even more significant and leads, as the educationalist John Hattie argues, to better marks. But the most important reason to think about the disciplinary consciousness of English is that it allows people to think and talk not only about texts but how they come to understand and interpret texts. It helps dialogue and discussion.
