Vocabulary denial and the false god of structuralism in Ofsted’s 2021 Curriculum Research Review for languages

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reviews the vocabulary section of Ofsted's Curriculum Research Review of Languages (2021). It begins with a reality check and observes that while the review talks confidently of learners achieving expert levels of knowledge and performance, current learner levels are nowhere near expert. In terms of vocabulary knowledge, learners at GCSE know only 5–10% of the 8000 or 9000 words needed to be expert. It considers criteria for an effective vocabulary curriculum from Milton and Hopwood's (2022) Vocabulary in the Foreign Language Curriculum: Principles for Effective Instruction. None of these criteria is adequately covered. The review is unrepresentative of vocabulary learning research. Guidance on vocabulary size, for example, is missing but language proficiency is very much a function of vocabulary size. This is a disastrous oversight. It advocates teaching a small lexicon of overwhelmingly frequent words, insufficient for anything but the lowest levels of performance in the CEFR. In this review, it is as though a large lexicon were of no importance to language proficiency. It is a falsehood to call this a review of research at all. It gives a false veneer of respectability to current, structuralist teaching practice, which teaches very little vocabulary, and which has led directly to historically low levels of attainment in British schools