it would seem to have little place at key stages 1 and 2.

Chris Woodhead, SCAA's chief executive, used ALBSU (The Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit) statistics and anecdotal evidence from employers and parents to argue that it was the English teachers and the advisory group who were out of touch.

languages are defined through use and their rules are socially constructed and maintained

They tend to say what spoken standard English is not

standard English is English spoken according to the correct rules of grammar but that argument is circular since correctness is only defined by standard English.

they were then shocked by the changes made to the published proposals. The outcome was a unanimous letter of complaint

the requirements appeared to be totally opposed to their colleagues' respect for accent and dialect

The demand for an emphasis on these aspects of talking and reading emanated from the DfE and Ofsted

language that is intended as authentic communication, rather than as an artificial exercise, is more likely to call forth the full range of students' linguistic capabilities

The most important principle of effective instruction for such students is ethnosensitivity, rather than ethnocentrism, on the part of teachers

the most pragmatic position seems to be that of biloquialism

it is unjust to insist on replacing nonstandard dialects with standard ones.

Biloquialism, often termed bidialectalism or biculturalism (as parallels to bilingualism or multilingualism), encourages the learning of mainstream language patterns without eliminating or denigrating nonmainstream ones.

Eradication, the traditional policy in the English teaching profession, assumes the undesirability of language patterns associated with nonmainstream groups and attempts to replace these patterns with more desirable mainstream ones.

many students from nonmainstream cultural groups are faced with a conflict between their own cultural and linguistic systems (and their identity as members of their ‘home’ groups) and those of the standard written language.

All normal human beings, having been enculturated into one group or another, have communicative competence

‘Non-mainstream,’ then, refers to those groups which do not conform to the above characteristics, and whose members speak dialects or non-prestige varieties of English that are considered ‘nonstandard.

Non-standard English, in contrast, is spoken by groups of people who have been isolated from the standard dialect,

‘mainstream’ is used to refer to those people in societies around the world who are characterized as literate, school-oriented, aspiring to upward social mobility

Such variation, of course, has significant implications for educational policy

The term ‘standard English’ generally refers to the variety of English used by the formally-educated people who are socially, economically, and politically dominant in English-speaking countries.

The identification of individuals with particular population groups (e.g., those based on socioeconomic class, gender, age, ethnic origin, or region of a country) is reflected in their use of particular linguistic items

a primary characteristic of any written standard English is the absence of socially stigmatized features