Talk Reform: Explorations in Language for Infant School Children

Originally published in 1970, Talk Reform describes the development of an exploratory language enrichment programme devised by the authors and carried out by teachers in a group of primary schools in a working-class area of London.

Inspired by Bernstein’s theory of different language codes and their relation to educational underachievement, the authors devised a series of situations in the classroom as preconditions for extending language use. Their aim was to reorient the reader to the soci...