Literacy in English

The notion of 'literacy in English' may at first seem an odd thing to be writing about. To the general public, 'English' and 'literacy' are undoubtedly synonymous. If one has to nominate a subject space in the curriculum where reading and writing per se are dealt with, that space is likely to be called 'English'. Other areas which the public associate with a field called 'literacy', such as spelling and grammar, also occupy in their minds a curriculum space called 'English'. Within the field itself- in curriculum and policy documents and in scholarly books and articles - the very point of English is invariably related to developing skills in reading, writing, listening, speaking, as well as viewing and creating visual and multimedia texts. All of these are skills we would normally see as 'literacy' skills. Nevertheless, the relationship between 'English' and 'literacy' has been a vexed one. This has (partly) been a result of the centrality of literature in English. Though historically English has largely depended for gaining its purchase as the central subject in the curriculum on both the perception that it was responsible for functional literacy and the perception that it was responsible for inculcating students into the canon of the cultural heritage, in fact these two responsibilities are quite odd bedfellows, moving in quite different directions.