ABSTRACT
Effective teaching of English in Key Stages 1 and 2 shared some characteristics. The most important were:
• a systematic requirement for the pupils to talk for a variety of purposes and at some length;
• regular provision of tasks which demanded independent reading and sustained, extended writing;
• provision of varied reading material; • systematic and rigorous appraisal of written work, which addressed not
only the surface features of spelling, layout, etc., but also structural and syntactic features and quality of content and organisation.
