ABSTRACT
This essay takes John Dixon’s Growth through English as a prompt to revisit the question of the relationship between language and experience. For Dixon, a consciousness of that relationship is at the heart of English curriculum and pedagogy, requiring sensitivity on the part of teachers to attempts by their students to give meaning to their experiences through language and the other semiotic resources available to them. To be sensitive to that struggle is to acknowledge the struggle we all face – teachers and pupils alike – when creating representations of our experiences in order to achieve a sense of our identities and an understanding of the world we hold in common.
