Mother-tongue teaching in Australia : the case of New South Wales

Using the state of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia as a case study, this article explores the development of mother-tongue English as a subject in the junior-to-middle secondary years of schooling (years 7–10). The current syllabus for English in years 7–10, and its predecessor, were highly influenced by the work of James Moffett and John Dixon in instituting the `growth model'' of English in NSW – a model characterised partly by the substitution of exercises in grammar and related areas by the principle of language learning through use. This model of English has come under attack in Australia generally from two main sources: schools of critical literacy and advocates of a genre-based approach to writing. Each of these rejects what they see as an emphasis on the individual in the`growth'' model and a lack of a sense of social construction. From the late 1980s, genre-based approaches to writing increasingly identified themselves with `literacy'', until then a unproblematic`given'' in `English'' syllabuses. `Literacy'' in official documentation now refers to language practices across the curriculum and, in terms of writing, to formulaic practices which refuse to see subject-based language as problematic.