Organised Innocence: Towards a Reframing of the School-HE Transition in English Studies

This paper argues that transition from school/college to university for students of English is rendered problematic by historically shaped differences in curriculum and pedagogy. A tradition of encouraging students' “personal response” to the “words on the page” of a literary text remains strong in schools, and English A level now offers many (but by no means all) students a choice of courses including language studies. However, A level English...