Writing in English and responding to writing

English as a school subject has a long history of the production of written texts by pupils, and these texts have always been subject to some form of evaluation or assessment, but the ways in which we as English teachers have conceptualised this process have often been very different from those in other subjects addressed in this volume. This is for a variety of reasons: first, English has a different function in society from the other subjects in this collection. This different function has led to a different emphasis within the evaluative process which in turn has meant that we have become very good at some aspects of evaluation and relatively unpractised in others. This chapter will attempt to explore the ways in which production in English has developed and the resulting problematic nature of evaluation in English before suggesting some examples from recent practice which may offer ways forward.