Discussing ‘learning’ in English, as the two quotations above suggest, is an extremely difficult prospect. Yet, as the attention of the educational community is turning inexorably to a re-evaluation of and improvement in the quality of learning across the whole curriculum, English cannot expect to be excused from this examination. An attempt has to be made at this time to focus more clearly and ‘draw in the boundaries, to impose shape on what seems amorphous, rigour on what seems undisciplined’ if English is to be able to claim a full and valid place in the modern curriculum. Whilst the idea of regarding English as a‘process’, as one of the alternatives offered by the Bullock Report quotation above suggests, has been attractive in the past, the ‘learning landscape’ of which English forms a part has changed. More has been understood about the actual processes of learning, and research into the nature of English...