KINGMAN REPORT

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KINGMAN REPORT. A British report on the teaching of English in England and Wales, presented in 1988 to the Secretary of State for Education by the Committee of Inquiry into Teaching of English Language under the chairmanship of Sir John Kingman. The Committee was asked to recommend a model to serve as a basis for training teachers in how the language works and to inform professional discussion, to consider how far the model should be made explicit to pupils, and to recommend what pupils should know about how English works. The model which it produced has four parts: the forms of the language; communication and comprehension; acquisition and development; historical and geographical variation. It has been criticized as a checklist of linguistic topics without an internal dynamic connecting the parts, or relating them to educational processes. Nonetheless, some of the Committee's arguments prepared the way for a greater emphasis on knowledge about language in the National Curriculum requirements for England and Wales (1989) than in previous curriculum discussion. See BULLOCK REPORT, COX REPORT, NEWBOLT REPORT, TEACHING ENGLISH.