ABSTRACT
The material on which this paper is based derives from the Versions of English Project, 1 a study of English and Communications curricula in the upper forms of schools and in colleges of further education. The purpose of the study was, in the first instance, to provide as full a description as possible of the different English courses taught in a number of schools and colleges. These descriptions, though centred upon classroom observation, would also take account of teachers' purposes and their students' perceptions of the courses. We expected that various versions of English, once identified, would prove not to be randomly distributed, and hoped to be able to relate them to the contexts in which they occurred, by reference both to institutional structures and to teachers' and students' attempts to pursue goals within these structures. We therefore designed the research so as to enable comparisons such as:
school with college courses; English with Communications; courses in business departments with those in technical departments; courses for students of higher with those for students of lower academic status (for example, different ‘streams’ or ‘sets’ in schools.)
