Vocabulary & Word Knowledge

Prompts for professional reflection, not diagnostic criteria. Look for patterns across contexts rather than single lessons.

• Decodes accurately but comprehension collapses on unfamiliar texts.
• Uses general words where subject terms have been taught — "the thing that pumps" for heart.
• Answers factual retrieval questions and stalls on inference.
• Taught vocabulary appears in the lesson it was taught and not afterwards.
• Misreads a question because one word in it was unfamiliar.
• Writing repeats a narrow set of words regardless of the task.
• Avoids reading anything pitched above the comfortable.
• Strong subject knowledge in discussion, thin written expression of it.

The DfE's reading framework builds on the Simple View of Reading: comprehension requires both word reading and language comprehension. Vocabulary sits squarely in the second. That is why fluent decoders can still fail comprehension tasks, and why phonics teaching, however good, does not by itself produce readers who understand.

EEF literacy guidance for KS1 and KS2 makes the same point pedagogically: develop pupils' language capability, teach a smaller number of useful words in depth, teach how words work, and use structured talk to build comprehension.

• Helps: the same words revisited across weeks and across subjects.
• Helps: talk partners rehearsing an answer that must contain the taught word.
• Helps: displays that get used in lessons rather than admired from a distance.
• Avoid: long word lists sent home to be learned and tested.
• Avoid: copying definitions as a task in itself — the copying is not the learning.
• Avoid: assuming pupils learning EAL need the same support as pupils with a language disorder; the profiles are different and the first group usually needs exposure and access, not intervention.
• Avoid: treating a low vocabulary score as a fixed characteristic of a child.

There is a genuine association here, and it is easy to overstate. UK cohort research such as the ALSPAC analysis by Clegg and colleagues links early language to later emotional and behavioural functioning, and NICE notes that children with communication difficulties are at increased risk of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties.

1. Department for EducationProfessional guidance
   The reading framework: teaching the foundations of literacy (2021, updated 2023)

   Sets out the Simple View of Reading — comprehension depends on word reading and language comprehension together — and a substantial section on developing talk. It is about teaching practice, not about any particular vocabulary programme.

2. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   SEND Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years (2015)

   Names communication and interaction as one of the four broad areas of SEN and sets out the graduated approach — assess, plan, do, review — that schools must follow.

3. Department for EducationStatutory guidance
   Early years foundation stage statutory framework (current version)

   Communication and language is one of three prime areas; providers must give children a language-rich environment and back-and-forth conversation.

4. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Oral language interventions (Teaching and Learning Toolkit)

   Rates oral language approaches — including explicit vocabulary teaching and structured discussion — as high impact for very low cost, based on extensive evidence. The Toolkit is revised periodically; check the live page for the current figure rather than quoting an older one.

5. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Preparing for Literacy: improving communication, language and literacy in the early years (2018)

   Recommends high-quality adult–child interaction and deliberate vocabulary development, and notes the recommendations may also apply to older pupils who have fallen behind.

6. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Literacy in Key Stage 1 (2017, updated)

   Places language capability — vocabulary, listening and structured talk — among the foundations of early reading and writing.

7. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 (2017, updated 2021)

   Recommends teaching a small number of useful words in depth, teaching pupils how words work — including roots, prefixes and suffixes — and using structured discussion to build comprehension.

8. Education Endowment FoundationResearch summary
   Getting to the root of vocabulary instruction (blog) (2024)

   Discusses morphology — teaching how words are built — as a promising approach. Promising is the right word: the UK trial base here is still small.

9. Royal College of Speech and Language TherapistsProfessional guidance
   Clinical information: developmental language disorder (DLD)

   Reports that DLD affects around 7.6% of children — roughly two in a class of thirty. DLD affects understanding and using language and is diagnosed by a speech and language therapist, not inferred from a low vocabulary score.

10. NICEProfessional guidance
    Early years: promoting health and wellbeing in under 5s (QS128), quality statement 2: speech and language (2016)

    Notes that children with communication difficulties are at increased risk of social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. It concerns early identification in the under-fives, not primary-age vocabulary teaching.

11. Clegg, Law, Rush, Peters & RoulstoneResearch evidence
    The contribution of early language development to children's emotional and behavioural functioning at 6 years (ALSPAC), Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2015)

    UK birth-cohort study finding an association between early language and later emotional and behavioural functioning. Observational, so it shows a link, not that improving vocabulary improves behaviour.

12. Dixon, Thomson & FrickeResearch evidence
    Evaluation of an explicit vocabulary teaching intervention for children learning English as an additional language in primary school, Child Language Teaching and Therapy (2020)

    UK primary evaluation showing explicit vocabulary teaching benefits pupils learning English as an additional language.

13. Murphy & Unthiah (University of Oxford, for the EEF and the Bell Foundation)Research summary
    A systematic review of intervention research examining English language and literacy development in children with EAL (2015)

    Review of what helps pupils learning EAL. A lower score on an English-only vocabulary test is a measure of English exposure, not of ability or of a language disorder.

14. CushingResearch evidence
    Word rich or word poor? Deficit discourses, raciolinguistic ideologies and the resurgence of the 'word gap' in England's education policy, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies (2022)

    A UK critique of how the 'word gap' has been used in English education policy. Worth reading alongside the vocabulary literature, not instead of it.

15. Sperry, Sperry & MillerResearch evidence
    Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, Child Development (2019)

    Found that the widely quoted '30 million word gap' figure (Hart & Risley, 1995, USA) does not replicate. The figure is still repeated in training materials; it should not be treated as established fact.

16. Speech and Language UKProfessional guidance
    Ages and Stages

    Qualitative descriptions of typical communication development by age band. Ranges, not norms — individual variation is expected.

17. NHSProfessional guidance
    Help your child learn to talk

    Plain-language NHS advice for families on everyday talk. Practical guidance rather than a research source.