ABSTRACT
English teaching is continually evolving. The subject taught in school will probably always be too much on the move in its activities – and too diversely influenced by various research interests – for any one approach or research tradition to encompass all there is to be said. An interest in language and learning has predominated, in post-war years, in school English teaching. However, the interest was never exhaustive and there have been notable elaborations of new perspectives in linguistics, literary studies and education, which have also helped to shape the subject. Many influences, then, have interacted at different points in empirical explorations of the whole loose alliance of skills and concerns and knowledge and interest which English teaching comprises. An awareness of these wider theoretical influences is a necessary point of entry for understanding research concerning English teaching; and it is also helpful to bear in mind an underlying narrative of change as new interests have emerged and been incorporated, and as old continuities of the subject have been redescribed.
