Embodied Approaches to English ‘Exam Prep’ in an Attainment-Driven Climate

In this chapter, I articulate an ‘embodied’ approach to teaching and learning English in preparation for examination. Drawing on the work of bell hooks and Myra Barrs, I discuss drama-inflected methods that mobilise imagination, feeling and lived experience within the English classroom. This would be in service of achieving greater authenticity and fluency when writing analytically about prose and creatively through narrative ‘for the exam’. I offer three examples of practice, developed in schools situated in an economically underserved and culturally and linguistically diverse area of inner London. I argue these approaches helped young people access their pleasure and power as readers and writers, within an exam-oriented education system shaped by a limiting cultural hegemony.