1000 RESPONSES TO ENGLISH LITERATURE‐‐(2)

In their previous article (Educational Research, 13, 1) the authors discussed the attitudes of 1,000 pupils in selective secondary schools towards literature generally and towards GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations. In that article they explored pupils’ expressed likes and dislikes of texts prescribed by GCE examining boards; they now consider these same pupils’ preferences in their leisure reading, and conclude that present methods of teaching English often fail to take into account ‘consumer’ response, particularly in poetry and drama reading.