ABSTRACT
This chapter asks the crucial question of what English is, what it does, and what it might offer as one of three particularly privileged (core) subjects in the English National Curriculum. The chapter begins by tracing the development of English as a subject and by showing how recently this subject gained full academic respectability. In doing this, the chapter identifies two pairs of current tensions within the subject, namely between literacy and literature and between reception and production. The chapter then sets this alongside an exploration of what English is in the world outside school, and asks how that relates to what we need to do as teachers of English from Key Stage (KS) 1 to 4. This will allow a consideration of how far this subject called English might need to change to reflect the changing society in which it is now located.
