Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.

History is a subject which of necessity makes extensive use of language in all its forms and so the links with literacy are many. Cooper (2000), Bage (1999), Hoodless (1998) and Nichol, in the Nuffield History Project, have all carried out research into different aspects of the links between literacy and history and into strategies for using these in teaching.

Most history is studied through the use of texts and oral accounts. Children's skills in communication are therefore developed continually in history in the course of reading, listening, writing and speaking, all skills without which it would be very hard to study history (Nichol, 2000).