35 Myths of English Teaching
How do we know what we think we know?
Before we start, you’ll get a lot more out of this post if you vote on your opinion here. Has crime in the last 30 years:
Now, let’s get more granular.
I ask this because teaching is full of deeply held beliefs which, from my grizzled 32 year obsession with data, seem to me to be wrong. Here is my personal list. Which ones do you agree with?
(I’ll give you the answers to the two quiz questions at the end of the post).
My Teaching Myths
Always undermark, as this will make students try harder.
If students haven’t understood an important part of the curriculum, reteach it.
Personalise questions to the students in the class, differentiating by ability.
We should adapt our teaching to the individual in a classroom setting.
We need to engage students so that they will remember more and learn more.
Setting allows us to teach students better, so that they make more progress.
We should use the last exam paper as our mock, as this means that no student will have seen the questions before, and therefore this will lead to greater progress.
If we don’t cover everything in the curriculum, students are doomed.
If we get students to read out loud, they will pay more attention and learn more.
Oracy is the key to students becoming more articulate.
If we teach vocabulary, students will make better progress.
Group work, if managed with excellent behaviour techniques, will lead to greater student progress.
If we teach students in ways which are similar to the workplace – with discussion, critical thinking – they will make more progress.
We need evidence of writing in books as the best way to see if students are learning what we teach, and this will lead to greater progress.
Testing is a poor way to teach – we should spend much more time feeding the pig than weighing the pig.
We should motivate students by making them engaged.
We need to practise GCSE question types at KS3, so our students will do better in the exams.
My Myths of English Teaching
We can best teach a text from extracts.
We should interrupt the reading of a text with activities which include writing to extend students’ thinking.
We need to practise all the question types of the exam.
We should encourage our students to answer the description question, as this is the easiest one for them to get right, and the hardest one to mess up.
We should teach advanced vocabulary for students to use in the story and description.
The story and description need adverbs and a range of the senses.
When the question says, ‘starting with the extract’, we must teach our students to do that.
Commenting on parts of speech is an exploration of method.
Complex methods like anadiplosis, syndetic listing and synaesthesia help students write better essays and get higher marks.
Students who don’t plan their answers are bound to do worse.
Students should name the word class of the words they analyse, as this will gain subject terminology marks.
Students perform better if we teach them a paragraph structure.
Cognitive load means that we should not teach students how to structure a full essay until they are in year 9 or 10.
The best way to prepare students for the exam is to give them a precise method for each individual question.
We should cover poems with annotations because students have to know so much.
Comparing poems means that we must keep comparing from one to the other.
We should teach students how many paragraphs they need for an essay, or a particular language question.
Teaching from model answers is just teaching to the test.
I’m an English teacher. I could go on and on. And you could disagree with each of my myths – especially if you too are an English teacher. But I am going to just say this:
I believe all of these are myths because I have tried to test them out against the evidence.
In teaching, our evidence is usually very biased. There are all kinds of ways in which our experience deceives us. We treat our experience as evidence. I don’t. My passionate beliefs about my 32 years’ experience are often wrong.
How do I know? The evidence I look for has to be measurable. It has to be a fact, or a series of facts. We can argue about how to interpret the facts, and their significance, but our debate is based on things which, on the evidence, are true.
What Counts as Evidence?
At its simplest, just do this. Count stuff. Then experiment and count again.
Vocabulary Example
So, you may currently teach vocabulary for 30 minutes per week. Do that with two classes.
With the next two classes, choose a text with appropriate vocabulary and sentence variety. Read it to the students - do not get them to read out loud – with very quick checks for understanding and prediction. 30 minutes per week, instead of vocabulary.
With the next two classes, use ChatGPT or Gemini to write short texts with those vocabulary words, repeated at spaced intervals. Read and do activities based on these texts – gap fills, are probably best.
Before, and after 10 weeks, give students two tests.
1. A test on all the vocabulary intended to be taught. E.g. You give the definitions, they write 1-3 words that it might be. (Or you give a list of all the words taught, and they have to find the right word for each definition).
2. Give them all a nationally based reading age test.
The difference in scores between these two events, and between the 3 groups of classes, will give you a very good steer as to which method leads to better progress.
As a head of English, I would organise experiments like this every 13 weeks.
Crime: My Analogy to Show Why This is Vital
Crime has been reduced by 90% in the last 30 years. Click on that link to find out more.
Violent crime against women has also reduced significantly in the last 30 years.
Surprised? I was. Wrong. Yes, me too.
If you aren’t counting the impacts on learning, you are probably wrong.
If you are an English teacher, my guide to being brilliant at the job, while cutting your working hours, and preparing you to lead a great department might be what you are looking for:
Sample it here: link.
Or read it FREE for 30 days: link